Evaluation of Teaching (Results of SET)

SET is a scheme designed to assist individual staff members to obtain structured feedback from students on their teaching by use of paper-based questionnaires. It is intended that the staff members concerned make use of the student feedback to make improvements to their teaching - a process that the University supports through both structured and negotiated staff development and program development services. SET data is tabled to the University Promotions Committee as part of a folio of evidence and accompanied by the staff member’s associated reflections and actions. Supervisors discuss SET results with individual staff members as part of annual performance review.

SET is used by the teacher to gather information about their teaching style and performance as reflected in the responses of their students. Staff can conduct evaluations at any time in the semester and as many times as they feel is appropriate.

SET feedback is confidential to the staff member and student respondents remain anonymous. SET feedback is used for reflection with the staff member’s supervisor for the annual performance review and for the purposes of one form of evidence of teaching performance in academic promotion.

The SET questionnaires are made up of three principal parts.

• The first ten items which serve summative, diagnostic, management oriented and quality assurance functions. 
• The second ten items (which are optional) which serve formative, diagnostic, individual oriented and quality enhancement functions. 
• The students' open ended written comments.

The first ten items of the questionnaire are standard across the University. Items 1 to 8 have been selected on the basis that they each focus upon a different aspect of teaching which research evidence suggests is important to good teaching. The eight aspects are:

Eight critical aspects of teaching

1. The educational aims and objectives for the teaching (Aims and objectives)
2. The teacher's content knowledge and pedagogical skills (Knowledge and teaching skills)
3. The teacher's personal characteristics (Teacher's characteristics)
4. The teacher's concern for students and their learning (Concern for students)
5. The teacher's engagement with, and commitment to, the use of formative assessment procedures (Assessment supports learning)
6. The teacher's focus on encouraging deep learning outcomes (Promoting understanding)
7. The curriculum design, which the teacher is responsible for (this includes consideration of the learning environment and the use of teaching materials and aids) (Curriculum design)
8. The teacher's commitment to improving their teaching. (Commitment to improvement)

There are ten standard items for recording a ranking in the SET questionnaire:

The order of items 1 to 8 is not arbitrary. Rather, the order is such that good performance on the first items is (to some extent) a prerequisite for good performance in subsequent items. Thus, for example, if the specification of aims and objectives is poor (item 1), it is difficult to do well on all the subsequent areas.

Item number 9 has been selected on the basis that assessment strategies are particularly important. This additional item signals the importance of this aspect of teaching/ course design.

Item number ten is an overall question.

Staff may customise the evaluation in a variety of ways by selecting from a bank of questions grouped by the type of teaching situation for the course such as:

And may further customise the evaluation by selecting from an additional bank of questions to focus on any of the following issues in greater depth:

SET Overall Satisfaction