Formative Assessment of Teaching

What are some strategies that I might try? 

There are multiple ways that instructors might begin to assess their teaching. The list below includes approaches that may be done solo, with colleagues, or with the input of students. Instructors may pursue one or more of these strategies at different points in time. With each possible strategy, we have included several examples of the strategy in practice from a variety of institutions and contexts.

Teaching Portfolios

Teaching portfolios are well-suited for formative assessment of teaching, as the portfolio format lends itself to documenting how your teaching has evolved over time. Instructors can use their teaching portfolios as a reflective practice to review past teaching experiences, what worked and what did not.

Teaching portfolios consist of various pieces of evidence about your teaching such as course syllabi, outlines, lesson plans, course evaluations, and more. Instructors curate these pieces of evidence into a collection, giving them the chance to highlight their own growth and focus as educators. While student input may be incorporated as part of the portfolio, instructors can contextualize and respond to student feedback, giving them the chance to tell their own teaching story from a more holistic perspective.

Teaching portfolios encourage self-reflection, especially with guided questions or rubrics to review your work. In addition, an instructor might consider sharing their entire teaching portfolio or selected materials for a single course with colleagues and engaging in a peer review discussion. 

Examples and Resources:

• Teaching Portfolio - Career Center

• Developing a Statement of Teaching Philosophy and Teaching Portfolio - GSI Teaching & Resource Center

• Self Assessment - UCLA Center for Education, Innovation, and Learning in the Sciences

• Advancing Inclusion and Anti-Racism in the College Classroom Rubric and Guide

• Course Design Equity and Inclusion Rubric

Teaching Demos or Peer Observation

Teaching demonstrations or peer classroom observation provide opportunities to get feedback on your teaching practice, including communication skills or classroom management.

Teaching demonstrations may be arranged as a simulated classroom environment in front of a live audience who take notes and then deliver summarized feedback. Alternatively, demonstrations may involve recording an instructor teaching to an empty room, and this recording can be subjected to later self-review or peer review. Evaluation of teaching demos will often focus on the mechanics of teaching especially for a lecture-based class, e.g. pacing of speech, organization of topics, clarity of explanations.

In contrast, instructors may invite a colleague to observe an actual class session to evaluate teaching in an authentic situation. This arrangement gives the observer a better sense of how the instructor interacts with students both individually or in groups, including their approach to answering questions or facilitating participation. The colleague may take general notes on what they observe or evaluate the instructor using a teaching rubric or other structured tool.

Examples and Resources:

• Peer Review of Course Instruction

• Preparing for a Teaching Demonstration - UC Irvine Center for Educational Effectiveness

• Based on Peer Feedback - UCLA Center for Education, Innovation, and Learning in the Sciences

• Teaching Practices Equity and Inclusion Rubric

• Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS)

Student Learning Assessments

Student learning can vary widely across courses or even between academic terms. However, having a clear benchmark for the intended learning objectives and determining whether an instructor’s course as implemented helps students to reach that benchmark can be an invaluable piece of information to guide your teaching. The method for measuring student learning will depend on the stated learning objective, but a well-vetted instrument can provide the most reliable data.

Recommended steps and considerations for using student learning assessments to evaluate your teaching efficacy include:

• Identify a small subset of course learning objectives to focus on, as it is more useful to accurately evaluate one objective vs. evaluating many objectives inaccurately.

• Find a well-aligned and well-developed measure for each selected course learning objective, such as vetted exam questions, rubrics, or concept inventories.

• If relevant, develop a prompt or assignment that will allow students to demonstrate the learning objective to then be evaluated against the measure.

• Plan the timing of data collection to enable useful comparison and interpretation.

• Do you want to compare how students perform at the start of your course compared to the same students at the end of your course?

• Do you want to compare how the same students perform before and after a specific teaching activity?

• Do you want to compare how students in one term perform compared to students in the next term, after changing your teaching approach?

• Implement the assignment/prompt and evaluate a subset or all of the student work according to the measure.

• Reflect on the results and compare student performance measures.

• Are students learning as a result of your teaching activity and course design?

• Are students learning to the degree that you intended?

• Are students learning more when you change how you teach?

This process can be repeated as many times as needed or the process can be restarted to instead focus on a different course learning objective.

Examples and Resources:

• List of Concept Inventories (STEM)

• Best Practices for Administering Concept Inventories (Physics)

• AAC&U VALUE Rubrics

• Rubric Bank | Assessment and Curriculum Support Center - University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

• Rubrics - World Languages Resource Collection - Kennesaw State University

Student Surveys or Focus Groups

Surveys or focus groups are effective tools to better understand the student experience in your courses, as well as to solicit feedback on how courses can be improved. Hearing student voices is critical as students themselves can attest to how course activities made them feel, e.g. whether they perceive the learning environment to be inclusive, or what topics they find interesting.

Some considerations for using student surveys in your teaching include:

• Surveys collect individual and anonymous input from as many students as possible.

• Surveys can gather both quantitative and qualitative data.

• Surveys that are anonymous avoid privileging certain voices over others.

• Surveys can enable students to share about sensitive experiences that they may be reluctant to discuss publicly.

• Surveys that are anonymous may lend to negative response bias.

• Survey options at UC Berkeley include customized course evaluation questions or anonymous surveys on bCourses, Google Forms, or Qualtrics. 

Some considerations for using student focus groups in your teaching include:

• Focus groups leverage the power of group brainstorming to identify problems and imagine possible solutions.

• Focus groups can gather both rich and nuanced qualitative data.

• Focus groups with a skilled facilitator tend to have more moderated responses given the visibility of the discussion.

• Focus groups take planning, preparation, and dedicated class time.

• Focus group options at UC Berkeley include scheduling a Mid-semester Inquiry (MSI) to be facilitated by a CTL staff member.

Examples and Resources:

• Instructions for completing question customization for your evaluations as an instructor

• Course Evaluations Question Bank

• Student-Centered Evaluation Questions for Remote Learning

• Based on Student Feedback - UCLA Center for Education, Innovation, and Learning in the Sciences

• How Can Instructors Encourage Students to Complete Course Evaluations and Provide Informative Responses?

• Student Views/Attitudes/Affective Instruments - ASBMB

• Student Skills Inventories - ASBMB