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Session 2230

Classroom Quality Assurance Using Students as Quality Managers

Dr. Deepti Suri

Assistant Professor Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Milwaukee School of Engineering Milwaukee, WI 53202 suri@msoe.edu

Abstract: End-of-term classroom evaluations frequently serve as the primary means for eliciting student feedback regarding teaching effectiveness of the instructor. Since the input from this assessment tool is collected so late in a term, the instructor is unable to make adjustments to enhance the learning experience of the current group of students. For effective teaching, it is important that student input be solicited at regular intervals throughout the term. Over the years, several classroom assessment techniques like “The Minute Paper”, ”Muddiest Point”, “Chain Notes”, etc. have been proposed to address this issue. This paper explores a new collaborative partnership between the instructor and the students based on using student representatives as Quality Managers (QMs) for the course. The advantages, disadvantages and positive impact of involving students as major stakeholders in the assessment process along with results from several courses in an undergraduate Software Engineering Curriculum are presented to demonstrate the impact of the approach on classroom instruction as well as on student learning.

1. Introduction The methods typically employed by an instructor to solicit feedback on a regular basis regarding their own effectiveness or the students’ learning in a classroom setting include (i) Asking students if they have any questions (ii) Instructor’s reaction to student’s questions (iii) Monitoring the students’ body language and facial expressions and (iv) Reading home-works, tests, lab assignments and so on. Even though these techniques are a large part of an instructor’s daily lives, collecting feedback in this way is a subconscious and implicit process. The candidness and quality of the feedback is also suspect because instructors almost always come across some students in the classrooms, who are very insightful but will not talk or voice their opinions in a public forum.

The primary “formal” evaluation technique used to elicit student feedback regarding the teaching effectiveness of the instructor is the end-of-term classroom evaluation. The feedback obtained from the students is usually candid in this case, but is collected so late in the term that the instructor is unable to make adjustments to enhance the learning for the current group of students.

The general consensus among the teaching community is that student evaluation should be solicited at regular intervals. Student evaluations solicited a couple of times during the term

Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright ©2003, American Society for Engineering Education.

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Suri, D. (2003, June), Classroom Quality Assurance Using Students As Quality Managers Paper presented at 2003 Annual Conference, Nashville, Tennessee. 10.18260/1-2--11380