New principles for evaluation

Evaluations play an important role in the work to quality assure and develop education programmes at SDU. Therefore, the recent changes to the general principles for the evaluation of teaching and education programmes at SDU may have implications for both students and lecturers.

Adopting new principles will not automatically lead to changes in the education programmes. However, the principles do require everyone to consider their current practices and decide if development of the area could be relevant.

The reasoning behind the changes

The new principles will help shift the focus from backward-looking control to forward-looking development initiatives and support an evaluation culture in which students, lecturers, heads of programme and other responsible parties work together to provide the best possible teaching and education programmes..

Ang other things, the principles are meant to invite reflection on evaluation as more than merely surveys for students at the end of the course. For this reason, they are accompanied by practical examples to inspire different approaches to evaluation, each with their own purpose.

About the changes

The changes have been adopted by the Council for Education, which ensures the managerial anchoring of SDU’s work with the development and quality assurance of teaching and education programmes.

The new principles encourage study boards, lecturers and others responsible for evaluation to discuss existing practices in relation to, for instance:

• The purpose: What is the purpose of an evaluation? For example, is it about how a course is structured or about the need to develop pedagogical skills?
  
  
• How it is carried out: Who, how and when? Should the students always be the ones to evaluate? Should it be possible to choose other evaluation methods than surveys and maybe oral evaluation? And should evaluations be done during the course, at the end of it, or after the exam?

• Actions: How can follow-up be ensured? How can we make sure that good experiences are shared and any problems are addressed before the next round?

It is a fundamental strategic ambition of the principles to raise awareness of the risk of over-evaluating using broad routine evaluations that do not create sufficient value for the effort students and staff put into them. Perhaps alternative approaches can be found, for example, by discussing which channels to use to gather information, formulating when evaluating is necessary and deciding how to use the results in targeted efforts?

Would you like to know more?

Here you can read the new Principles for evaluation, development of teaching, education programmes and teaching competences (in Danish)

Here you can read more about SDU’s work with education quality