Planning FET

Before you start collecting data about your teaching, it would be useful to spend some time to reflect on your past experience in teaching to decide what you want to focus on to improve. Some instructors might want to focus on a particular area of their teaching (e.g. they have tried a new method to encourage class discussion and want to find out if students have benefited from it.) Others might want to conduct a comprehensive review of their teaching just to find out what things are working well, and what things less well. Hence it would be useful to ask yourself the purpose of your FET exercise.

For those who want to conduct a comprehensive review of their teaching, there are tools which they might find useful. Such tools can help to identify areas of teaching that might need improvement. One source of these tools is the book by Weimer, Parrett and Kerns (1993) entitled "How am I teaching?", which contains forms for collecting feedback from students and peers about various aspects of teaching.

For those who want to focus on a specific area of their teaching, the following is a listing of those aspects of teaching that instructors might wish to probe.

Once the purpose of the evaluation is confirmed, you will need to select an appropriate method to collect the data, which will be discussed in the next section - Collecting data and evidence. Angelo and Cross (1993) suggested the use of a 3-phase approach with a focus on the effectiveness of student learning: 

• Planning
• Implementing
• Responding

In the planning phase, the instructor selects a class and decides what aspect of student learning to focus on. In the next phase the instructor teaches the lesson, then collects and analyzes feedback from students about their learning. The final phase involves the instructor interpreting the findings, identifying a method to improve teaching, and communicating the plans for change to the students.