Considerations for Developing a Student Evaluation of Teaching Form

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Highlights

  • Student evaluations are a key strategy for gathering information about the nurse educator's teaching effectiveness.

  • The majority of student evaluation of teaching (SET) forms use objective items that are rated on 5-point Likert scales.

  • The SET form should be standardized across courses and programs in a school of nursing.

  • The form should include specific open-ended questions about the course and teaching instead of a blank space for general comments.

  • Open-ended questions should be placed at the end of the form rather than with each of the Likert scale items.

Abstract

Student evaluations of teaching (SET) provide feedback to nursing faculty for improving courses and teaching and to administrators for making personnel decisions affecting faculty. We surveyed the literature to better understand the content of and types of rating scales on SET forms. In this article, we summarize our findings and use the information gathered to provide guidance for development of SET forms for use in nursing programs.

Introduction

Student appraisal of courses and faculty is an important component of the overall evaluation of a nursing program. This appraisal generally takes the form of student evaluations of teaching (SET). Data from these evaluations are used for making decisions that affect the nurse educator's career: contract renewal, promotion, tenure, and other personnel decisions. In addition, student ratings and comments provide feedback to the teacher about areas of the course and teaching that might need to be improved. Given the potential impact of student evaluations, the selection of the right evaluation tool is a key component of the process. The most appropriate tool depends on the areas (teaching effectiveness, course organization, delivery of content, and others) to be assessed and the type of information (quantitative and/or qualitative) that is required.

For this article, we reviewed the research on forms used for SET in multiple fields of study. The aim was to develop a better understanding of the content and types of rating scales included on these tools. The purpose of this article is to present a summary of the literature and guidelines for nursing faculty in developing a SET form for use in their nursing program.

Section snippets

Review Methods

The studies reported in this article were retrieved through a comprehensive search of the literature in the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, PubMed, and Education Resources Information Center. A research librarian developed a broad search strategy to capture all articles related to student evaluations of courses or teachers within health professions education. We also captured some articles from other academic disciplines in our search and retained those that were

Content of SET Forms

Student evaluations provide an opportunity for students to give feedback about the course and teaching. Items on the SET form should be based on research on effective teaching and other information that the faculty member seeks about the course or teaching approach, for example, feedback on a new assignment in the course or change in clinical site.

Student evaluation of teaching forms typically assess student perceptions about the organization of the course, teaching methods, course assignments,

Types of Rating Scales on SET Forms

The majority of SET forms use objective items that are rated on 5-point Likert scales (Agbetsiafa, 2010, Barone and Lo Franco, 2010, Chang, 2012, Chulkov and Van Alstine, 2012, Frick et al., 2010, Nation et al., 2011, Ross et al., 2013, Rucker and Haise, 2012, Stalmeijer et al., 2010). In general, one Likert scale should be used consistently for all items on the form (Chulkov & Van Alstine, 2012). When a different scale is used for one or more questions within the evaluation, it introduces

Implications for Nursing Programs

Student ratings are a key strategy for gathering information on teaching effectiveness (Zhao & Gallant, 2012). These tools collect information from students about their experiences, opinions, and satisfaction related to the course and teacher. Considering the importance of this evaluation, SET forms need to be carefully selected or developed. In this article, we identified typical areas of content evaluated on these forms. These include organization of content, teaching methods, course

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