Evaluation of Teaching and Learning

EVALUATION OF TEACHING AND LEARNING

Our academic staff at the South African National Bioinformatics Institute have created online Google docs evaluation sheets to assess Lecturers and course content. Below I give an overview of the feedback from students and I show a snapshot of the questions we asked to evaluate lecturer performance.

BTN315:

For this year we have generated online Google evaluation sheets for the BTN315 course and will strongly encourage students to complete the online evaluation forms.

Course evaluation:

Level of difficulty extreme hard normal easy

Level of interest very high high medium low

Level of novelty very high high medium low

Course organization very good good medium bad

Course pace very good good medium bad

Lecturer evaluation:

Please provide marks from 1-7 (1 = bad, 7 = perfect)

How good were the lecturers in: databases alignments phylogeny comparative genomics

Providing a general overview on

Explaining the importance of

Explaining the concepts of

Introducing tools for

Providing application examples for

Answering students questions about

Introduction to Bioinformatics four week training course:

For the Intro to Bioinformatics course I had 21 responses from 24 participants. The overall feedback w.r.t my part of the course were that I had to be more detailed in my lectures, more practical examples, make slides and notes regularly available and my assignments need to be more clearer. Students also asked if the course could be longer. However, there were also positive feedback from students regarding my lectures; some said no changes were needed and that the Lecturer was well prepared and that I was knowledgeable on the topic. These were feedback from students on what can be improved on in future courses given by our Institute. This feedback I will implement when planning my Lectures and practical assignments for next year in order to improve on my teaching methodology.

Below are some of the questions asked about the lecturer and overall course content:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/14hqsg3JDft6P9sh3MmDenPvTFTgqYmg2aW2_jwI58vE/edit

Lecturer evaluation:

1. Lecturer was always well prepared for his/her lectures

2. Presents lectures in a way that makes the topic accessible and understandable

3. Made an effort to make the subject matter interesting and stimulating

4. Is highly knowledgeable in the subject being taught

5. Had a good relationship with class and was approachable

Content:

6. Was this course relevant to your studies?

7. Do you feel you would like to learn more about this topic i.e. was it interesting?

8. Do you think that you are able to apply what you have learnt?

9. Was the length of the course appropriate?

General comments: (use back of sheet for additional comments if necessary)

10. What can be improved on for this course?

11. Any comment on the general organization of the workshops?

12. Are there any other courses that you would like to have seen offered?

Below I list an excel sheet containing responses from students on the SANBI Biocourse 2018:

I was also peer-reviewed by the teaching and learning specialist, Dr. Karen dos Reis (kdosreis@uwc.ac.za).