While self-analysis can certainly help to develop us as teachers, external feedback is essential to make us more aware of what we are doing well and what we could do differently or better. In general, teaching feedback can come from the following sources:
Your Course or GA Coordinator
You can ask your course or GA Coordinator for informal feedback on your performance at any time during the course or after the course.
At the end of your TA or GA position, your coordinator will be submitting an evaluation for each TA that will include an evaluation of the following criteria:
- Reliability and Responsibility (Attends TA meetings, completes course-related tasks, returns assignments on time, follows course policies.)
- Collegiality and Professionalism (Participates constructively in course meetings, assists or mentors fellow TAs, is engaged with the course.)
- Knowledge and Preparation (Knows course materials such as text, online materials, course assignments and objectives.)
- Student Interaction (Communicates effectively with students, responds to student inquiries promptly and professionally.)
- Quality of Assessment (Grades accurately. Provides thorough, helpful feedback.)
- Overall Evaluation (Holistic evaluation over the whole term.)
Each of these criteria will be scored according to the following scale: Outstanding (O), Excellent (E), Very Good (VG), Needs Improvement (NI), Unacceptable (U), or Not Applicable (NI). Most criteria scores will be in the Excellent (E) or Very Good (VG) range, which indicates a solid performance over the term. A score of Outstanding is reserved for exceptional performance in a given category, and is relatively rare. If you receive a score of Needs Improvement (NI) or U (Unacceptable), you might want to speak to the Course or GA Coordinator to gather information on how you might improve your performance.
In addition to these scores, the Course or GA Coordinator will indicate how many TA meetings the TA has missed and submit a brief overall paragraph summarizing the TA's performance over the term.
Evaluation results will be forwarded to TAs at the beginning of the following term by the TA Coordinator. TA Evaluation results may be accessed by the TA Coordinator, Graduate Officer, Assistant Director, and Director.
Note: At the end of the term, you will also be given the opportunity to submit a TA Experience Survey, which allows you to give anonymous feedback to the course coordinator on your experience as a TA over the term.
Your students
GIs receive feedback from their students through online course evaluation forms which are made available toward the end of term. Currently, TAs teaching in online courses do not receive individual course evaluations from their students, but students do fill out an online evaluation form for the course as a whole. The online evaluations, which are available to the course coordinator only, generally don't provide much information on individual TA performance, but you can ask your course coordinator for any student feedback that might pertain to you.
For GIs, it may also be helpful to create ways in which students can submit ongoing course feedback or to have students do a mid-term course evaluation so that you can make adjustments mid-way through your course to better meet their needs. See the CTE’s Using mid-term student feedback for guidelines for creating and administering your own mid-term evaluations.
The TA or GI Coordinator or other faculty member
If you are a GI, you can ask the TA or GI Coordinator or another faculty member such as your dissertation supervisor to observe either your class or your online interactions with students. The purpose of this observation is to provide formative feedback that will help in your development as a teacher. The observer will discuss with you what specific elements of your teaching you would like comments on and what date and time would be best for your observation.
The observer may stay for an entire class or only a part of it. You can request written feedback from the observation, which can then be placed in your teaching file. Either you or the observer may also request a meeting to discuss the feedback.
The Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE)
You can contact the CTE to arrange for somebody to visit your class and give you teaching feedback. Contact the CTE Liason for the Faculty of Arts, for more information. The CTE's Fundamentals of University Teaching and Certificate in University Teaching also include feedback from peers and CTE staff.
Peers
To get another perspective on your teaching performance, you could invite a fellow GI or TA to drop in and observe your class. See the CTE’s Peer review of teaching guidelines for information on making the most of peer feedback.