Method of Course Evaluation
In the 2011/12 winter semester, an interdisciplinary work group further developed the academic standards of the course evaluation questionnaire, which was introduced in the 2005/06 winter semester. To select relevant didactic parameters of good teaching from the selection of quality parameters and associated points, some members of the work group have drawn on their expertise for approaches to teaching and learning in higher education and educational science. These were presented to all members of the interdisciplinary work group and discussed in the context of the different subject cultures. Also, evaluation questionnaires from other universities, questionnaires from the Georg-Elias-Müller-Institut für Psychologie and specific questions from the Göttingen faculties were sifted and reviewed for their applicability in the new questionnaires. This procedure resulted in some cases in varying parameters of good teaching for the different types of course, whilst in others they were standard.
In further steps, analyses of factors confirm empirically that the points do actually represent different and interpretable parameters. The factors resulting from the preliminary tests showed the relationships that empirically exist between the points. Subsequent selection of points attempted firstly to reduce the number of empirically redundant points. Secondly, theoretically-obtained parameters which are relevant in educational science and didactic terms were again taken into account in the resultant questionnaires. These new multi-dimensional questionnaires also included the global overall assessment of the course.
The consequent results were discussed by the Central Committee for Teaching and Learning and in the Senate and passed in different standard questionnaires per type of course. The university-wide questionnaire strategy is thus based on two innovations. Firstly, it is differentiated by type of course (lecture, lecture series, seminar, exercise/tutorial, work experience/excursion and language course). Secondly, it now differentiates by quality parameters, doing away with the previous restriction of university-wide standard questions to enquiring about the parameter of overall satisfaction.
Over a two-year project the survey method was changed from a paper-based survey to Online-in-Präsenz, which was passed by the senate as a standard process in the 2019/20 winter semester.