Streamlining course evaluations at Swiss TPH

The Swiss TPH Education and Training (ET) portfolio contains undergraduate and graduate teaching (Bachelor and Master), PhD courses, and professional postgraduate education including other teaching products. As key stakeholders regarding course evaluations we identified program leaders with curriculum responsibility, the teacher and the students, the ET course administration who perform most of the evaluations, and external institutions such as SSPH+, University of Basel, its Advanced study centre or the inter-university MPH program that set conditions.
An analysis of the present status showed a wide diversity of different evaluation formats as well as evaluation questionnaires in use. To perform an evaluation is rather time consuming: The estimated time effort for the evaluation of both the Specialised Master in Epidemiology and Infection Biology amounts ten working days per year. The effectiveness of these evaluations is not always given as neither common rules exists to reach high response rates, to support teachers with lower results nor to reward and motivate teachers to continuously improve their own performance.
The aims of the “streamlining course evaluations” project are:
1. Increase effectiveness by closing the quality circle of all existing course evaluations
2. Increase efficiency by harmonising instruments, optimising use of existing (internal and external) supporting tools and standardising evaluation procedures
3. Keeping compliance with existing regulations at all levels of academic education and with requirements for the re-accreditation of the professional postgraduate education portfolio

Project Facts