Suggestions for Specific Questions on Your Course Evaluations
You may click on one of the questions from Penn’s “Course Evaluation Form” for a general sense of what undergraduate students may mean with their answers and some practical suggestions that may help faculty respond to student ratings.
I. Student Background
One element of putting evaluations in context is considering the students in your class. Students’ backgrounds can indicate the reasons why they took the course and that, in turn, may shape their attitudes toward the course.
Understanding your students’ backgrounds may help you begin to make changes. For example, if a large number of non-majors are in your class, you may need to reconsider how you cover issues that majors might take for granted.
In addition, it is worth looking at the students' expected grades. Studies have shown some correlation between expected grade and a student's rating of the course but the reasons for theat corellation are ambiguous. At Penn, studies of the correlation between expected grade and overall course ratings suggest that professors should examine this connection along with the perceived difficulty of the course. Students dislike courses in which hard work and engagement will not result in an A. However, Penn students often value a challenge that they think they can meet and may value such courses over courses in which they can get an "easy A."
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II. Questions
1. Overall quality of the instructor.
This vague question is difficult to generalize about. Students value a number of things in an instructor and what they value differs from student to student. Nonetheless, students generally like an instructor to be enthusiastic about their subject. Students may give high marks to professors who clearly care about the subject and the students. You don’t have to become a glitzy performer but students do want to see that you enjoy what you do. In addition, students like professors who indicate that they want students to succeed.
For many students, one way to show your enthusiasm and your concern about their learning is to be organized. They want professors to come to class prepared and to have a clear sense of how individual classes and assignments are going to help them learn.
Thinking about this question in terms of organization (preparation for class and the whole course) and enthusiasm (the amount you care about the subject) can indicate some possible steps instructors can use to improve.
If you feel this is an area of concern:
• Organization may go beyond having an outline that is clear to you. Think about internal summaries and transitions within the outline to help students better grasp the ideas and content.
• Use your introduction and conclusion in class to help students see the relevance of the material and its connection to the course’s goals.
• While planning class, ask yourself “Why are we doing this in class now?” and be sure your answer connects to the goals of the class. Once you have a good answer make that answer explicit to students in all course activities.
• Show your enthusiasm by indicating your own interest in the subject. Allow students to see your love of the discipline and why you have devoted your life to studying it.
• Indicate your interest in the students by treating them as individuals and treating them fairly. Even if you can not learn all their names, try to include some form of participation in the class.
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2. Overall quality of the course.
Students often rate courses most highly when they feel they have learning something. When the goals of the course are close to their own goals, they feel that the course is particularly good. As a result, paying attention to the information about the types of students in your course can help an instructor better understand what goals the students bring to the course. When students’ goals do not correspond to your goals, take the time to explain the reasoning behind your goals and make sure students see the relevance of your focus.
If you feel this is an area of concern:
• State your goals clearly in the syllabus and articulate those goals to students throughout the semester.
• Signal how assignments and activities will help students develop the abilities and knowledge you hope they will develop.
• Decide what you want students to learn before you chose books, write your syllabus, or create assignments. This will allow you to use classroom materials more effectively to communicate your goals to students.
• Express your goals on all assignments, and explain how meeting or not meeting those goals is part of your grading process. Give students a clear sense of how you (and they) will know that they have met your goals.
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3. Instructor’s ability to communicate the subject matter.
Students give courses high ratings in the category when professors pace class appropriately, use concrete examples to explain abstract ideas, organize individual classes and whole courses coherently, and give students time to understand what they have absorbed.
If you feel this is an area of concern:
• Give students opportunities to demonstrate their understanding by applying what you have taught them.
• Use concrete examples and try to explain concepts and ideas in a variety of different ways. If students can’t understand one example, they may understand another.
• Before you start teaching, make sure students can see you from every seat in the room and make sure they can hear your normal teaching voice.
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4. Instructor’s ability to stimulate student interest.
Students will engage even with the most arcane subject matter for instructors who are interested in them and the topic. The best way for instructors to gain students’ interest to appear invested in their success, set clear, appropriately difficult goals, and give them a good reason to care about the topic.
If you feel this is an area of concern:
• Be explicit about the value of this class for the students and for you. While it is important to do this the first day, continue to make the course and the material relevant for students throughout. Even if that relevance is abstract, try to explain it in concrete ways that make sense to the students.
• Use different instructional methods when appropriate and create a variety of different assignments so that students don’t feel that they are in a rut and so that they feel assignments reflect their individual talents.
• Demonstrate your own passion for the subject by showing students your own interests. If you model enthusiasm for the subject in class, your students will learn enthusiasm along with your subject.
• Create opportunities for student participation in class. They will be more interested if they have some hands-on opportunities to try it themselves.
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5. Instructor’s accessibility and willingness to discuss course content and any problems.
It is possible to be accessible without losing your privacy or giving up too much time for students. Students value any one-on-one time you give them and respond better to direct invitations than vague offers of help.
If you feel this is an area of concern:
• Be clear about when and how is the best time to contact you. Obviously, students should know your office hours but they should also know if email or the telephone is the best way to contact you outside your office hours and they should have a realistic time frame within which they can expect a response.
• Invite students to office hours (some people even require students to visit their office once during a semester.) When they are there, ask them about their experience in class. Try not to bring students in only when they are having trouble.
• Assume that students have questions. Rather than asking “any questions,” ask some questions that they might already have to see if they can answer them. Try to frame the sections of class where questions are encouraged in ways that make students comfortable asking. (Avoid: “This seems clear to me. Any questions?”)
• Be accessible in class. Small things like greeting students, learning their names, and taking time to respond to them as people show them that you want to answer their questions.
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6. Value of assigned readings.
Students want readings that help them understand the subject.
They disagree about the value of reading that only repeats the lecture (some like the opportunity to get the information more than one way, others find it dull and repetitive.) But they dislike reading that seems to have nothing to do with class or reading that seems excessive.
If you feel this is an area of concern:
• Choose books and reading materials with the course goals in mind.
• Give students a reason to read and digest the material before they get to class and make sure that they are recognized in class and on assignments for careful reading.
• Help students understand the value of the readings by connecting them clearly to the goals of the course and to the ways they are being graded.
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7. Amount learned from this course in terms of knowledge, concepts, skills and thinking ability.
Students consider this question differently for different courses. For discussion courses, they expect to increase their skills and thinking ability; while for courses that are largely lecture they expect to increase their knowledge. Overall, they believe they have learned a lot from a course when they have been given high standards and clear goals. If your high standards matched their expectations, they feel particularly satisfied with what they have learned.
If you feel this is an area of concern:
• Find out your students’ reasons for taking the class early in the semester. If their goals are different from yours, be clear about the disconnections. Help them understand what you expect and why.
• Make your standards explicit and give students concrete examples of how to succeed in class.
• Provide practical, concrete feedback. If students are doing poorly, try to be as specific as possible about what they need to do to improve. Even if students are doing well, explain why so they know how to do it again.
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8. Please rate the difficulty of the course.
9. Please rate the amount of work required for this course.
The answers to these two questions (8 & 9) may be hard to interpret. In some cases, students like a challenge and will rate courses highly as long as they think they can meet that challenge. In fact, students frequently rate difficult courses more highly than easier courses. Students often value classes in which they have to work as long as they feel their hard work is rewarded. Students typically do not value work that seems too easy (but still required) or work that they find too difficult.
While faculty sometimes think that they need to make their courses “easy” to improve their ratings, that may not be the most effective way to respond to student ratings. Students may have felt the course was disorganized or that your grading criteria was disconnected from the course. Making changes in places other than difficulty or amount of work you demand might be the best way to address these issues.
If you feel this is an area of concern:
• Chose an appropriate level of difficulty for students and create assignments in and out of class that are hard but “do-able”. Help the students meet any challenges you provide for them.
• Explain the reasons behind the amount of work you expect of students. They will value work and assignments that they see as helping them learn the subject matter but will resent work that appear to have been assigned simply to occupy time.
• Consider these two questions in connection with other questions and understand that low ratings may not be the result of your course being too difficult but your students’ perception that they aren’t being challenged to learn something.
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10. Would you recommend this course to a major?
11. Would you recommend this course to a non-major?
Like questions 8 and 9, questions 10 and 11 can put some of the other numbers into perspective but can also be ambiguous. A student’s willingness to recommend a course depends on a number of factors. Obviously, it has something to do with the amount they enjoyed the class but the answers may have to do with other factors in the major.
Students might feel that the teaching was fantastic and that they enjoyed the course but that the information was so specialized that a non-major would not benefit. On the other hand, they may have disliked the class because it was aimed at people outside the major and they felt you spent too much time on the basics when the students wanted more in-depth information.
As a result, you can use these questions in the same way you use questions about student background and workload; they can indicate useful directions to refocus the class given your expectations about audience.
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12. To your knowledge has there been any cheating in this course?
It is difficult to draw any firm conclusions about actual cheating from responses to this question. While these answers may be inconclusive, you should consider responding to this question if there is any indication that cheating has occurred. Academic dishonesty frustrates honest students as much as it does instructors.
If you feel this is an area of concern:
• Explain plagiarism and cheating to your class, express the penalties in your syllabus, and enforce those penalties if you catch someone cheating.
• Teach your class so that students value their own work and ideas. Engage and energize them so that they feel that their voice is important and are interested in what they do.
• Organize tests in large classes to discourage cheating. Change test questions frequently and give several versions of a test. Check students’ PennCards at the door of the exam and ask students to sit apart from each other.
• Create assignments that frustrate plagiarists. Avoid typical essay topics and ask students to hand in stages of the assignment so that they have to do the work. (Consult Nick Okrent’s page on research assignments for more tips.)
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Additional questions:
If you decide to use additional questions, the CTL has a list of some additional questions that you might consider arranged by type of course.
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Comments Encouraged Below
Many instructors feel the open-ended comment section is the most valuable element of the course evaluation because students can provide their own candid and constructive ideas about the course. Unfortunately, Penn students typically leave this section blank and professors often have to go out of their way to see more than just the numerical summaries of the student ratings.
If you do want to see the comments, you may have to ask your departmental administrator to see copies of the actual forms.
Perhaps the most useful approach to the “Comments” section is to look for patterns. Rather than focusing on one or two comments, try to find what the majority of students say. Don’t ignore negative comments, if they show up repeatedly. Such comments may be painful to read but can also point to areas of an instructor’s teaching that need further work.
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(Some ideas and the organization for this site came from Dartmouth's Center for the Advancement of Learning's "Interpreting Your Course Evaluations" site. We developed this advice in consultation with the CTL's Undergraduate Advisory Board.)
These suggestions are only suggestions. If you need more information or have questions about how to implement changes in your course contact Bruce Lenthall (215 898 4170) or Cathy Turner (215 898 1686) at the Center for Teaching and Learning.
