EVALUATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION
One of the means of transforming classroom experience is by conducting
action research with students. This paper reports about the action research with
university students. It has been carried out within a semester of the course “Methods
of Upbringing”. Its goal has been to improve evaluation of higher education teaching.
Different forms of summative and formative evaluation have been devised
with an emphasis on creating critical friendship between student and professor
(authors of this article). Video recordings of lessons have been utilized for realization
of critical friendship. At the end of lesson students have been offered various
questionnaires and evaluation sheets, and an open standardized interview has been
conducted with a group of students. A workshop dedicated to evaluation of higher
education teaching has been carried out as well.
This research has shown that students can actively participate in evaluation,
and that their comments and suggestions should stimulate teachers to improve all
stages of teaching process, including evaluation. The authors believe that evaluation
of higher education teaching could be brought to a higher level by educating teachers
and students about the importance of evaluation for the quality of teaching process
and finding ways to include students in this process
We believe that all the criteria for evaluation o f goals have been met.
Formative evaluation has been conducted using various evaluation procedures
such as evaluation sheets, questionnaires, interviews, critical friendship, etc.
Based on the evaluation results we have tried to continuously improve teaching
quality. Summative evaluation has been conducted using various evaluation
procedures designed by students at the final workshop on evaluation o f higher
education. Based on the data presented, the conclusion can be reached that all
the characteristics o f fourth generation evaluation (Guba & Lincoln 1989, p.
253-256) were present: It was discovered that evaluation is a social and
political process during which students and teachers agree on the changes
which should be in accord with their needs and interests. To do that, it is
required that all the participants in the teaching process learn from one
another. Dealing with the issues o f evaluation o f teaching we found out that it
was a continuous process which demands constant critical re-examination o f
practice and finding creative solutions which may be appropriate for particular
situations, but should not be regarded as universal “truths” applicable to all
teaching situations.