Evaluating your teaching

Self-evaluation process involves answering questions about your own practice as an educator; you evaluate your own performance to help you to identify or prioritise areas for development, and to address specific concerns through targeted solutions and improvements. 

Self-evaluation can take various forms, for example:

• Observing yourself through video recordings can help you rate your own effectiveness in delivering instruction, engaging your learners and managing the teaching environment.
• Compiling a portfolio - a collection of work/resources you've developed over time  - e.g. assessments, instructions you've written, lectures you developed, revision resources, workshop materials - can help you showcase your growth, reflections, achievements and evidence of development.
• You can record your experiences in a journal and then review your notes. This approach can provide insights into what was effective and what could be improved upon.

It may be helpful to write a short reflection on the self-observation experience. What aspects of your teaching worked well? What changes would you like to experiment with in future sessions? Documenting these reflections can help guide your ongoing development and provide a useful reference point for future evaluations.

Looking for support and advice from a peer is an effective way to gain confidence in your teaching, and help you to find new ways to approach your teaching.

You arrange with a peer a suitable teaching/facilitation event you would like them to give feedback on. In these observations everyone involved has knowledge to share the observer will gain so much from the experience as much as you will if it is carried out with clear aims. 

For peer observation to work well, there should be three stages to the process.

1. Before the observation, decide on a specific area of your practice you would like feedback on, e.g. student engagement opportunities. If possible, meet with your observer to discuss it. 
2. During the observation, try to deliver your teaching or workshop facilitation as you would ordinarily. The observer will be making notes to identify key feedback opportunities. 
3. After the observation, meet with your observer to discuss feedback - ideally a few days after the event, not immediately after. This ensures you both have time to reflect and recollect often immediately after an event you can be very critical of your teaching/delivery.  The post-observation discussion is a key moment for reflection. Take the time to listen carefully to feedback and ask clarifying questions if necessary. Engage in a dialogue rather than viewing feedback as a one-way process; this allows you to gain deeper insights and consider alternative approaches to teaching challenges.

See more guidance on Peer Dialogue.

Student-led evaluation helps you understand what is preventing your students from learning, whether that be the learning environment or subject-specific content. 

Student voice is formally gathered as part of the wider university agreement.

At Newcastle University, this is done through our:

• Annual Monitoring Review
• Newcastle Experience Survey 
• National Student Survey (NSS) 
• Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES)

Each module, or unit of learning (for non-modular courses), is required to have a mid-module check-in as detailed in the Student Feedback Policy.

However, you could also undertake some informal activities to support your learners directly and further your development. This is where you can have direct feedback in an instant to help reshape your teaching/learner experience in the moment.

Some techniques you could use in a live teaching session or workshop are: 

• Using polling systems (e.g. VEVOX) to assess the progress of the learners 
• Traffic light feedback - using the colours of the traffic lights, ask the students what you could stop doing (red), continue doing (amber) and start doing (green)
• One Minute Paper - Give learners time to write down some anonymous responses to some questions from the lecture, seminar, lab, workshop. Example prompts:
  • What was the most important concept you learned today?
  • What is one question you still have about today’s topic?
  • How does today’s lecture/seminar/workshop connect to what you already know?
  • Summarise the key takeaway from today’s lecture/seminar/workshop in one sentence.
  • If you had to explain this topic to a friend, how would you do it?
  • What was the most surprising or interesting idea from today’s discussion/lecture?