Students’ Self Evaluations
NEW!!! Guide to Self and Narrative Evaluation for Students (.pdf) – on writing self evaluations, using narrative evaluations from faculty, and setting goals for their work.
Below are older posts – much of which is folded into the new guide above, some might not be. Do explore.
Many students make excellent use of self-evaluations. Some do not understand their purposes of self evaluation or how to write a meaningful self-evaluation. You can give students guidance about writing self evaluations. In particular, you might want students to write about their learning relative to your course goals and/or their own.
To learn more about what students say about self evaluation, watch this video on data from the Hampshire Learning Project. Here is the presentation on Critical Reflection and Evaluation (pdf) from the April 7th Faculty Meeting’s discussion on self reflection.
Here are a series of handouts that show different ways to engage in self evaluation. Select one that you like to share with students or create your own:
- Here is a handout for students from Herb Bernstein & Sarah Hews (.doc) on self evaluations
- And an update from Herb Bernstein (November 2015)
- Here is Lynn Miller’s handout: Lynn on Self Evaluations (.pdf)
- This is a third Tips for Self-Evaluation (.doc) compiled across faculty, including Michele Hardesty.
Portfolio Guidelines and Expectations
If you do not use the course moodle site for your assignments, students need to know what will constitute their final course portfolios. Here is an example from Kristen Luschen that includes a portfolio checklist and directions for student’s course retrospective and self evaluation.
Mid-Semester Self-Evaluations – All students who entered this academic year (first years and transfers) must do self evaluations. It is likely that they don’t know how to do them well. You might want to give them specific questions to guide their reflection and writing – consider your goals and what you want them to get better at doing. You might also want them to give you some feedback on how the course is going at the same time. Here are examples of questions one could ask of students that include self and course mid-semester evaluation (Word document). One suggestion – if you do a mid-semester course evaluation, make sure students know what you heard them say and what, if anything, you will be doing differently as a result of their feedback.