Why has the teaching evaluation been renewed?
For several years we witnessed a decreasing trend in the participation of students in the teaching evaluation. A high participation is important in order to achieve reliable results using our teachers and training for monitoring and improving the quality of education.
 
We listened to the students and the main reasons for the low participation was that it took too long to complete the assessment, including some questions that were less relevant and the repetitive nature of the yearly questionnaires. It is also important for students to see that something is actually done with the results of the teaching evaluation.
 
What is new about this year’s teaching evaluation?
The first change is that students no longer complete a teacher evaluation on each professor but on each course. Students are asked a few questions about each course and in that context they have the possibility to evaluate the different teachers. For courses with several teachers this will be a time saver.
 
Secondly, the questionnaires have been updated, making them more relevant. In addition to the survey of regular courses, there are now customised questionnaires for students’ bachelor theses, master theses and internships.
There are also adjustments made in monitoring the results. For example, from now the chairmen of education will be notified of the results, and they are actively involved in the quality assurance at the level of the education council.
 
What do you expect from the results?
We expect and obviously hope that more students will participate in the teaching evaluation this semester.
 
The teaching evaluations in recent years have taught us that our expectation of the quality of education at the VUB is backed up by the experiences of our students as well. As indicated for the academic year 2015-2016, 87% of students gave our teachers a 'good' or 'very good'. I naturally hope that the results remain positive and even improve.
 
Because the system was renewed, the results will be first be examined by a special committee in the coming months in order to ensure that the monitoring and follow up of results can be done optimally. The results of this first semester will therefore only be available in October 2017, together with the results of the second semester.