174 AEFIS: Aligning section, course, and program outcomes – 04.25.2019

At the April 25, 2019 Active Teaching Lab, 24 attendees discussed the status of AEFIS at UW-Madison. Participants explored ways instructors and programs streamline teaching by aligning section and assignment outcomes with course and program outcomes. The lab touched on what’s been done, what’s happening now, and what’s coming in the future.

Takeaways

• Although the role of course evaluations in contributing to student learning seems apparent to instructors, students may not see the full picture. State the purpose of the evaluation at the top of the survey: that student input and feedback helps guide improvements in the course.
• Create focused feedback questions. In other words, each question should ask about only one thing. This way, students don’t have to prioritize their responses, sift through a laundry list of ideas, or skip parts of the question to keep responses concise.
• Include both closed- and open-ended questions on evaluations. Closed-ended questions enable easier data analysis, but open-ended questions help identify perspectives you may not have considered before.
• For more best practices and sample course evaluation survey questions, visit the Provost’s Student Learning Assessment page.

For more information on AEFIS, evaluation, and outcomes alignment, visit the session’s activity sheet.

Video

The Active Teaching Lab is a Faculty Engagement program with sessions held on Thursdays from 1:00-2:00pm and Fridays from 8:30-9:45am in the Middleton Building (1305 Linden Dr.), room 120. Check out upcoming Labs or read the recaps from past Labs. We build interdisciplinary conversations that are more emergent than a presenter and more dynamic than a panel — a conversation with colleagues sharing challenges, solutions, and experiments on topics selected by a variety of stakeholders.

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