Redesigning teaching evaluations with students and staff

Updated Sep 10, 2026

Correction, 7 September 2026: Earlier versions of this briefing and our 15 March article attributed the paper to the wrong authors. The two articles have been consolidated here. We have corrected the attribution and removed claims about disagreement over rigour and learning environment that we could not substantiate, along with claims of demonstrated improvements in trust or response quality.

What the source reports

Lorraine Valdez Pierce, Alexandria Zylstra, Esperanza Roman-Mendoza, Divya Varier, Judith Collazo and Lori Bland describe a project to redesign a student evaluation of teaching survey. Their paper, “Redesigning student evaluations of teaching: integrating faculty and student perspectives”, was published online on 9 April 2025 in Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education.

The authors describe work over six years and six stages: faculty consultation, a literature review, input from students and other stakeholders, item selection, a pilot and policy recommendations. Staff and students identified shared priorities for effective teaching, including clear communication, commitment, respect, preparation, organisation and enthusiasm for teaching. Their input informed changes to the survey.

Improvements in trust, response quality or teaching effectiveness should not be inferred from the redesign process alone.

Questions for a university reviewing its survey

Our practical interpretation is to make the purpose of an evaluation explicit before revising its questions. Ask students and staff what each proposed item means to them and what decision its answer would support. Pilot wording locally and inspect comments that suggest respondents interpreted it differently.

This is a suggested review process, not an intervention tested by this briefing. A university would need its own evidence to assess whether a revised form improves the usefulness of feedback. The NSS comment analysis buyer’s guide gives a framework for comparing analysis workflows; the public NSS methodology explains why coverage and comparability need separate checks.

References

Pierce, L. V., Zylstra, A., Roman-Mendoza, E., Varier, D., Collazo, J. and Bland, L. (2025). Redesigning student evaluations of teaching: integrating faculty and student perspectives. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 50(6), 833–845. Publisher record. DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2025.2479117.