If you teach at McGill University, you might be interested to know that you can add up to three questions to your course evaluation questionnaires. McGill’s Teaching and Learning Services (TLS) recommends that you take advantage of this opportunity to gather student feedback that might not emerge in response to the unit’s default questions, such as feedback on new teaching strategies and technologies you’ve tried; new classrooms or other teaching environments you’re in; and changes you made to your teaching as a result of previous course evaluation feedback. You can add multiple choice questions or questions that call for comments only.
Creating meaningful course evaluation questions can be challenging, though. In a 45-minute webinar for McGill instructors entitled Customize your Course Evaluations: Writing Meaningful Questions, (McGill sign-in required), TLS shared several guidelines through a Q & A format. For example:
Check out the webinar recording to see more examples and guidelines, as well as a guidelines checklist for question writing.
Looking for question ideas? See TLS’ new resource, Course evaluation questionnaires: Gathering feedback you can act on, which contains a bank of recommended questions and guidelines for writing meaningful questions. Questions about course evaluations? Check McGill’s Mercury website or contact mercury.info@mcgill.ca.
What questions have you added to your course evaluation questionnaire?
Associate Director, Teaching Success, and Senior Academic Associate, at McGill’s Teaching and Academic Programs
(Photo credit: Owen Egan)
