Comparing student and faculty assessments of the effectiveness of learning activities

A robustly designed course normally comprises a variety of learning activities, each intended to facilitate the achievement of specific learning objectives to a specific depth or level of learning. In other words, faculty usually design the learning activities of their courses with specific learning objectives in mind. With the implementation of outcomes-based assessment, student self-assessment of their own learning and of the effectiveness of the learning activities in their courses is a significant part of the course and program assessment of learning effectiveness. Students in an introductory engineering class were required at semester's end to assess the effectiveness of course learning activities (homework, projects, lectures, assigned textbook readings, etc) in supporting their achievements of the course learning objectives. This was accomplished through the use of a matrix that mapped each of the course learning objectives to the course learning activities. Instructional faculty: also assessed the intended impact of the course's learning activities, as well as their judgment of the actual effectiveness of the learning activities. Faculty assessments of intended impact fairly closely matched their estimates of actual impact, however, there were significant differences between faculty assessment of effectiveness and student assessments of effectiveness. Detailed results and their implications for using student assessments of the teaching effectiveness of various learning activities will be presented.