Teachers’ evaluation: Students help overcome shortcomings,says SIE

Seeing such a positive impact of the exercise,the institute plans to include the process in the Annual Confidential Reports (ACRs) of the staff from the coming session.

When the exercise was introduced three months ago,it had led to much apprehension among the 15 teachers at the institute. With evaluation and analysis of teachers by 200 students,the faculty as well as students seem contented.

“There has been an enormous impact of this exercise of students’ feedback. There are several instances where teachers have overcome their shortcomings after being made to realise by their own students. For instance,we must have asked one teacher to be punctual but the plea had fallen on deaf ears. But when the same came from his students,he is now punctual,” said Director SIE Dr Surinder Dahiya.

There were several areas highlighted in the feedback forms.

The students had the liberty to not mention their personal details like name,telephone number and e-mail ID.

A student had to grade the teacher on the basis of punctuality,teachers’ style of presentation,understanding of the subject matter,cooperation,subject taught in an interesting manner,encouragement by the teacher and overall rating.

“We thought that teachers would take the criticism in a negative sense and the impact of it would be on us. But to our surprise,we saw marked improvement in the teachers.

“Earlier,teachers did not involve students in the teaching process but now they have started asking questions and making the lecture more interactive and interesting,” said one of the students.

On the positive outcome of the process,Dahiya said that from next year this exercise would be a part of the ACRs of teachers.

“This time it was an internal exercise but from the next year it would be more comprehensive and included in the annual reports,” said Dahiya.