The "Course Evaluation Follow-up" Form

End-of-semester evaluations provide a collective verbal portrait of our courses from the students' point of view. Yet as we read evaluations one-by-one, it is often easier to focus on isolated comments -- usually the glowing and the incendiary -- than to spot patterns of constructive feedback on course content, teaching, and learning. With this is mind, I developed the "Course Evaluation Follow-up," a note-taking guide for reading and synthesizing course evaluations.

While the primary purpose of the "Course Evaluation Follow-up" is to identify and distill recurring and representative feedback on the course, the form provides a place for teachers to highlight specific praise, and to address off-the-wall, embarrassing, or frustrating remarks. In the short term, the form allows teachers to acknowledge and move beyond an emotional reaction to unusual comments so that they may fine-tune their courses based on valid criticism. Later, teachers can to turn to a collection of organized notes and quotes rather than stacks of old evaluations as they compile a teaching portfolio. Having briefly summarized their teaching strengths each semester (see item 4 on the form), teachers will be better prepared to discuss their performance on reflective essays and during job interviews.

This form has helped me to revise my own courses, and it has saved me hours of work as a TA supervisor and mentor. I use the forms to guide my own reading of the TAs' evaluations each semester. When it comes time to write a letter of recommendation, I pull the forms from my files. The combination of the TA's notes, the highlighted quotes, and my own annotations, makes it possible to back up statements such as "Mary's course evaluations are always stellar" by citing specific examples, without rereading hundreds of evaluations.

The Course Evaluation Follow-Up Form