Faculty-student engagement in teaching observation and assessment: a Hong Kong initiative

There is now a worldwide focus on the quality of university teaching and yet there is general dissatisfaction in universities with the student evaluation of teaching system. Peer observation of teaching seems to hold much promise in the assessment of teaching quality, but such observation pays little attention to the quality of teaching as perceived by students. One approach to overcome this deficiency is for faculty and students to also partner in the assessment of a faculty member’s teaching, with a student trained in observation and feedback techniques acting as a peer in the observation process. This paper describes and evaluates an ongoing student consultant initiative at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. It presents faculty and student observations in terms of the benefits to faculty regarding potential enhancement of university teaching, and the benefits to students especially in terms of close collaboration with faculty and training in consultation techniques. The paper notes that the student consultant initiative has been more popular with students than faculty, and recommends further investigation of the potential of such programmes in Hong Kong higher education.     

Transformational classroom leadership: a novel approach to evaluating classroom performance

In higher education, student evaluation of teaching is widely used as a measure of an academic’s teaching performance despite considerable disagreement as to its value. This paper begins by examining the merit of teaching evaluations with reference to the factors influencing the accuracy of the teaching evaluation process. One of the central assumptions on which student evaluation of teaching is based is that there is a relationship between student achievement and student rating of teachers. However, the findings of the majority of studies do not support this assumption. The absence of a strong link between student achievement and teaching evaluations suggests that there is scope for examining other approaches to measuring effective classroom dynamics. This paper presents such an approach based on the notion of transformational classroom leadership.     

A Behaviourally Anchored Rating Scales Approach to Institutional Self-assessment in Higher Education

Institutional self-assessment is considered to be a crucial quality assurance mechanism in higher education. However, the criteria employed in self-assessments tend to ignore the overall organisational effectiveness of the institution. This paper describes a study which employed the effectiveness criteria contained in the Competing Values Model of Organisational Effectiveness (Quinn & Rohrbaugh, 1981, 1983) to produce a set of organisational effectiveness self-rating scales for Hong Kong higher educational institutions. The scales were developed using the behaviourally anchored rating scales (BARS) procedure. The study produced scales which address the organisational effectiveness of an institution and appear to be a useful addition to the array of quality assurance mechanisms in higher education. The paper highlights the qualitative benefits of the scale development procedure and resulting scales and notes that the procedure could be employed, and the qualitative benefits enjoyed, in other higher educational systems.