"On Teaching" lunch seminar will focus on evaluation The next "On Teaching" seminar of the semester, “How am I Doing? Rating Yourself as a Teacher,” will take place Wednesday, Nov. 18, from noon to 1 p.m., in the Red River Valley Room of the Memorial Union. Each semester faculty members in higher education take on teaching duties. For most, this is a recurring task. For the majority, it is the central task of a life-long career. Assuming that no one is perfect and therefore everyone has room for improvement, evaluation is the means by which we try to identify which aspects of our teaching are good (which are working in terms of student learning) and which need to be changed. Evaluating our teaching allows us to document it for others. And many argue that there is also a very human and personal need to evaluate. It is one thing to think or feel that a class went well; it is quite another (and a far more enjoyable experience) to have solid information that tells us that we have taught well and students have learned well, or to have concrete evidence about how to improve our work. That insight is possible only if we do a thorough evaluation. End of the semester USAT forms don’t really provide the kind of information we often want, and they provide it too late in the game to benefit the semester in progress. Doing good evaluation is like doing good research. In both cases, you are posing questions that you continually re-examine with data. The key to doing both activities well is identifying the right questions to ask and figuring out how best to answer them. Over the lunch hour we will discuss why it is important to ask questions of you own teaching, what questions are valuable to ask, and how to gather information that helps provide sound answers to those questions. We hope you will come and join the conversation. And if you have developed some effect means of evaluation that have allowed you to improve your practice and student learning in you classes, we would love to hear about them. Please register by noon Monday, Nov. 16, to reserve a lunch and attend. Visit the Office of Instructional Development online (www.und.edu/dept/oid) to register. For information call Jana Hollands at 777-4998 or email jana_hollands@und.edu . -- Anne Kelsch, Director, Office of Instructional Development, anne.kelsch@und.nodak.edu, 777-4233