Evaluation design
Designing evaluation briefs, question frameworks, and assessment criteria.
How to Design Open-Ended Course Evaluation Questions That Get Useful Answers
Open-ended evaluation questions usually fail not because students have nothing to say, but because the prompt asks for too little. The survey-methodology evidence on answer-box size, verbal instructions, and specific framing — and what it means for the comment box.
The Double-Barreled Question: Why "Knowledgeable and Approachable?" Is Two Questions, Not One
Course-evaluation items that ask about two things at once force students into a single, uninterpretable answer. Here is the measurement evidence on double-barreled questions and how to split them.
Autonomy, Competence, Relatedness: Evaluating a Course Through Self-Determination Theory
Most course evaluations ask whether the teaching was good. Self-determination theory suggests a more predictive question: did the course support students' needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness? Those three needs, meta-analytic evidence shows, drive the motivation that in turn drives learning — and almost no institutional survey measures them.