This blog explores how evaluation can be used as a positive way to develop your teaching and learning practice.
Whether evaluating a specific intervention or examining closely aspects of a new unit there are productive ways to evaluate that help teachers develop their practice and at the same time support students’ learning. We hope that the tools, case studies and resources on this blog may help inspire you to develop your own evaluative processes for your teaching.
For further information contact Frania Hall on f.hall@lcc.arts.ac.uk via the button below.
Evaluation for Teaching & Learning
Evaluation is undertaken across the university, taking many forms, often involving external stakeholders and the formal evaluation processes required for institutional reports. However, this blog focuses on evaluation for supporting and developing day to day teaching and learning. It provides a framework to assess the impact of your teaching activities and help you reflect further on the value of what you do.
Evaluative tools can help you explore aspects of student experience and engagement, student learning and student journey; breaking down what you want to investigate before you start enables you to set parameters for your evaluation and focus on getting the evidence you need to learn about what works and what doesn’t work. By keeping evaluation closely aligned to processes for capturing student voices as well as co-creation in curriculum design, evaluation can both be meaningful to students and a positive experience for staff.
Positive Evaluation is…
Evaluation Research
This blog is the result of a UAL teaching and learning enhancement sabbatical.
This involved a research project which developed 4 case studies from different sorts of organisations and how they undertake and use evaluation; the research also involved a series of interviews with staff about opportunities and barriers for them in undertaking evaluation and a focus group with students about what they experience in terms of evaluation and what would make this a positive experience for them. Creative tools, for example, can help students map where they are within a unit while also providing staff with understanding how the students are learning.
The results explored both how to embed evaluation and how to develop an evaluative culture within an organisation.
Embedded evaluation is where we think about evaluation throughout our practice, building positive inclusive partnerships with students, making evaluation meaningful and relevant, in a supportive culture; this leads to opportunities for growth and is central to an iterative process for change.
An evaluative culture is one of mindset, recognising the value of collecting evidence on which to make decisions and supporting flexible but robust ways to build and share knowledge of effective practice: in this way it can be seen as a cumulative process for organisational learning.
Principles of Evaluation for Teaching & Learning
Principles of evaluation have been developed from this research and further conversations across UAL. It seeks to integrate evaluative processes into units.
Five main tenets have evolved from this project:
I. What is being evaluated must be carefully considered. This is different from evaluating a whole unit for example; but focused on particular research questions — evaluation design is key.
II. Evaluative processes must be easy to implement within class and involve regular touch points to capture data in different ways.
III. Evaluation must be relevant to students; they must see the value in the evaluation.
IV. Evaluation leads to evidence-based learning. The results from the evaluation must be disseminated so learning about what works can be integrated more widely.
V. The process is iterative — so one evaluation leads into the next and forms part of the continuous development of teaching practice.
Please explore the blog. It includes…
TOOLS
Sets of worksheets that can be downloaded to help provide ideas for collecting data, which includes an engaging design sheet.
PROJECTS
Case studies from the 2023-2024 Media School evaluation pilot project showcase six diverse projects. Each brief write-up links to detailed presentations, highlighting the data collection and analysis process.
FINDINGS
Summaries of findings from pilot projects.
RESOURCES
Links to useful professional resources such as those provided by The Office for Students and Advance HE.
READINGS
Lists of selected academic articles and books on evaluation.