Online Subject Evaluation/
Who's Teaching What
Purpose
Why are we doing this?
In short — to improve teaching and learning at MIT. Currently, both the central paper subject evaluation system and the means for collection of teaching data are problematic. It takes a long time to produce evaluation reports, and it's difficult (if not impossible in some cases) to determine who is providing instruction to which students. We are acting on the recommendations of the Task Force on the Educational Commons, the Working Group on the Collection of Teaching Data, and other Institute committees, groups, and individuals in order to develop the means to present timely and accurate feedback on the MIT educational experience.
What are the expected outcomes?
Students will be able to:
- Fill out evaluation forms online anytime, any day during the evaluation period.
- Evaluate multiple instructors for a single class.
- Type thoughtful open-ended comments – no more writer’s cramp (and your distinctive handwriting won't give you away).
- Give valuable feedback and make a difference in the quality of teaching at MIT.
Instructors will be able to:
- Submit their own questions.
- Spend class time teaching, rather than administering the evaluation.
- Get evaluations from all students, not just the ones who show up on the last day of class.
- Send automated emails to students who haven’t responded.
- Get richer feedback from students.
- Receive individual electronic reports, including open-ended comments, quickly.
Departments will be able to:
- Enter teaching data more easily.
- Add department-specific and instructor-specific questions.
- Evaluate as many instructors as needed per subject.
- Match qualitative comments with instructor, with no typing or scanning required.
- Receive useful data for setting policy and making comparisons.
Administrators will be able to:
- Report on who is teaching what to whom — types of faculty, subjects taught per faculty, and enrollment per subject.
- Report on longitudinal data.
Everyone will benefit from:
- Streamlined processes.
- Easy-to-search data.
- Quick reporting.