Using students’ feedback to evaluate teachers’ effectiveness

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the effectiveness of students’ feedback as a teacher evaluation tool. An effective teacher evaluation system should incorporate multiple measures of teachers’ performance. Currently, all students evaluate lecturers teaching at both the diploma and degree levels using the same set of questionnaires. As the entry requirements for the two classes of students are different, the feedback results do not fully reflect the teaching efficiency of teachers. Students’ assessment of teachers must support valid inferences of teachers’ effectiveness and is one of the many tools of teacher evaluation. The author also argues that for a teacher evaluation model to be effective, the university needs to look at other measures such as student achievement, content knowledge, instructional planning and delivery, and classroom management.