Dalhousie Student Evaluations for Teaching Assistants: How to Obtain Feedback
Teaching assistants (TAs) play an essential role in classrooms, providing vital support to both students and teachers. Evaluating your performance as a TA is crucial, not just for refining your teaching practices and identifying what works or doesn’t work in your class, but also for your professional development. So, what are the benefits of collecting student evaluations for TAs?
Evaluations help ensure that TAs are effectively supporting students. By assessing your performance, you can pinpoint your strengths and identify areas for improvement. This feedback can help guide your professional growth and enhance your teaching skills. It also offers a chance to reflect on your teaching methods and refine your strategies. Positive feedback can boost your confidence, and constructive criticism can give you ideas for improvement. This continuous learning process helps TAs become more skilled and adaptable in diverse classroom settings. Additionally, the feedback you receive can be included as part of job applications for teaching positions. Reflecting on feedback showcases your commitment to creating meaningful learning experiences for students, and your ability to incorporate feedback into your teaching. Whether you are a new TA or have been a TA for many years, here is some information about TA evaluations at Dalhousie and how you can receive them.
How Can You Receive Formal Feedback from Students as a TA?
Most higher education institutions, including Dalhousie University, have formal standardized evaluation forms that students complete at the end of the term. You might know these as end-of-term course evaluations or student evaluations of teaching. At Dalhousie, the formal evaluation system is the Student Learning Experience Questionnaire (SLEQ), and it evaluates various aspects of teaching performance such as instructor fairness, feedback, communication and organization, among other things.
Though the SLEQ does not include evaluation for TAs, there are different ways that you can request feedback through the formal mechanism of the SLEQ. Depending on your program and department, you could fall under one of the following categories:
Your department/program has opted to run evaluations for TAs (note that the format and the system in place might be different across departments and programs). If you want to know if you are being evaluated and who will be receiving the reports, you can contact your department or SLEQ@dal.ca.
Your department/program has NOT opted to run evaluations for TAs. In this case, the course instructor may be open to adding a question or two about your performance as a TA. Instructors can add up to six custom questions to the SLEQ; you could ask them to add a question specifically about your performance as the course TA. This allows you to receive feedback through an established evaluation process.
Alternative Options: Informal Feedback
If you discover that you are not being formally evaluated by your department, but you would still like feedback from students, here are some alternatives to consider:
With the instructor’s permission, you can gather informal feedback mid-semester or at the end of the term. Using tools such as Microsoft Forms or other survey platforms, you can anonymously ask students a few questions about your performance as a TA. These questions could be similar to those in the SLEQ, or tailored to areas you believe are important for improving your teaching.
Seek feedback from your peers or the course instructor. You can invite them to one of your lab/tutorial sessions to observe and provide feedback on your teaching and interactions with students. There are resources available on the Centre for Learning and Teaching website to help you if you are new to peer feedback.
A few things to keep in mind when it comes to student evaluation:
It is recommended to gather anonymous feedback to ensure the student’s identity is protected and that they feel comfortable providing honest feedback.
TA evaluation might not work well for marker positions. When multiple markers are involved in a course, students’ feedback will be pooled for all markers involved, and you may not receive relevant and specific feedback on your own performance. This might be a case in which asking your course instructor and peers for feedback on your marking approach is the best option to gauge how well you are doing and find areas for improvement.
Give yourself time and space to reflect on the feedback you received. How would you integrate the feedback in your teaching practice? What would you do to improve your teaching based on students’ feedback?
Don’t forget to reach out if you have any questions about the SLEQ or feedback process. Email SLEQ at SLEQ@dal.ca.