“Assessing your own teaching is significantly important.  A trait of an effective teacher is one, who is reflective and assessing oneself continuously.”  – Stan Yoshinobu

I found a great list of “IBL Self Check” questions for course and instructor [self-] evaluation here: http://theiblblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/ibl-self-check.html Now I’ll go through them and see where my courses stand.

1. Are student presenting/sharing ideas in class regularly? Can this be done more often in a way that benefits students?

By the end of the semester, my students will have had lots of practice working in groups. At the start of the semester, I was very focused on having at least one group problem every class. Now that has fallen off quite a bit — partly, I think, because the problems themselves have gotten longer so we haven’t had as much time at the end of class as we used to. Each course will have had eight Lab assignments — weekly, group-based problems. I need to get better about grading them and returning them faster. (Turn around time has been ~1 week.)

2. What percent of time is devoted to student-centered activities?

My classes meet for a total of 225 minutes. About 90 of these have been for labs and end-of-class group problems. So 40%. Not bad!

3. Are students deeply engaged in the tasks you have given them?  Can your problems/tasks be improved?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In December, I want to go back and make up a “Top Ten” list of topics students struggle with — maybe using final exam data — and see if I can change the Labs to more closely reflect those topics.

4. How many times per class period are you being supportive by giving encouragement, positive feedback, coaching, adjusting tasks to meet the needs of your students? and 5. Can you give more positive feedback?

This is tough. With a full classroom of 40 students, I don’t know how to “check in” with twelve or thirteen groups of students, especially in a very short (~8 minute) window.

6. Can you improve the problems/tasks given to students?  Are the problems too procedural in nature? Are there good concept questions?  Are the problems too difficult?

I need to look at this in December.