Information for Evaluation Appointees
For which tasks is the Evaluation Appointee responsible?
The Evaluation Appointee is named by the study commission and informs the instructors about the selection of courses to be evaluated. This person creates a list including the title of the course, instructor name, number of participants, and classification to the study programs for registering the courses at the Center for Quality Analysis. After the assessment the Evaluation Appointee receives a complete evaluation of the study program, the faculty or institute, and the individual results of the instructors, when they have given their consent. These must be then sent to the study commission. The Evaluation Appointee is also the contact person for the instructors, students, and the ZQA.
Why do course evaluations exist?
One objective of the course evaluations is for instructors to receive feedback from the students in order to continually improve their instruction. Another reason is that the results enable the TU Dresden to assess the teaching situation and to develop strategies for improving the teaching. Section 7, paragraph 4 of the Evaluation Regulations of the TU Dresden (in conjunction with § 9 paragraph 3 of the SächsHSG) forms the legal basis of the course evaluation.
What is the process of the evaluation?
The evaluation takes place with the help of standardized, machine-readable questionnaires for lectures, seminars and lecture series, with the choice of either German or English. Depending on the stipulation from the study commission, up to four further program-specific questions can be added. Any changes regarding the questionnaire are to be notated on the amendment form and sent to the ZQA by the Evaluation Appointee. Further information about this method of evaluation can be found here.
Who decides which courses will be evaluated?
The selection of the courses to be evaluated is the responsibility of the study commission. It is ensured that all course types are adequately considered and each instructor will have a course evaluated at least every three years (§ 8 Principles of the Quality Management System for Teaching and Learning at the TU Dresden). Both the selection of the course as well as the underlying selection criteria are to be announced internally to the faculty or department and outlined in the yearly report of the study commission or in the teaching report of the faculty or department.
More frequent course evaluations are of course possible. Courses given by non-professorial teaching staff, lecturers etc. can also be evaluated.
Are there deadlines? Why are these important?
The time period for the course evaluations is standardized for the entire TU Dresden. The evaluation time period occurs approximately in the second third of the lecture period. Deadlines are necessary to ensure that the results of the surveys can be discussed by the respective instructors and students of each course at the end of the lecture period.
What happens when the minimum number of questionnaires (less than 10) is not reached ?
For courses where less than 10 completed questionnaires have been received, the evaluation through the project “Evaluation of Teaching” is not possible. To protect the anonymity of the students, questionnaires from courses with less than 10 participants will be destroyed in accordance with data protection regulations. Courses with less than 10 participants can be qualitatively evaluated at the end of the semester in a discussion with the students. Information about the possible processes can be downloaded here.
How will the open-ended questions be evaluated?
In addition to the frequency counts, a result report contains the presentation of comments made by the students. The open answers of the students are passed on to the lecturers unchanged.
How are the results of the course evaluations utilized?
The results of the surveys are to be discussed by the teachers and students together at the end of the lecture period. In addition to this the study commission receives the evaluation results from the Evaluation Appointee, provided that a Consent Form from the instructor exists. The study commission discusses the results and presents their conclusions in the annual report of the study commission and in the teaching report of the faculty or department.