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HCIDC

HCI Disciplinary Commons Portfolio - Fiona Fairlie

Evaluation Commentary

Evaluation of a module can mean different things depending on your perspective – student, teacher or manager.It can take place formally or informally and can be carried out using a number of different methods. Formally my school’s quality procedures oblige the module leader to write a Module Monitoring Report each session. This requires that they review and comment on

  • student performance as evidenced by pass rates (including comment on the spread of marks, differences in exam and coursework performance, differences between cohorts, trends over time etc)
  • student feedback, both formal and informal (including analysing the returns from the Module Feedback Questionnaire (MFQ), reviewing the minutes of Staff Student consultative committee meetings and considering informal feedback from students)
  • any correspondence with the external assessor
  • interface with associated modules
The report is also expected to provide a brief over view of the delivery, summarise and evaluate any changes in delivery style from previous years and to propose enhancements for the next delivery.
Writing the report is a useful exercise and does ensure that the module leader accesses and reflects on the data gathered. However while examining student pass rates, looking at satisfaction levels evidenced in the MFQ, attending staff/student consultative meetings etc can all provide useful feedback and each has its place none of them really give a “feel” for the change one hopes has taken place in the way that students will approach the process of designing an interface in future. For me,from a teaching perspective, the most useful way to judge if the delivery of a module has been successful is to watch students in the subsequent semesters of their course.
This year I have not been working with “my HCI students” during the second semester and so have not had the opportunity of observing the development of their work. I therefore feel that despite some encouraging indicators: a first diet pass rate which is higher than in the previous deliveries, no negative comments about the module in the MFQ or at staff/student meetings and no points being raised by the external examiner; I am not yet in a position to judge whether this delivery of the module has been successful. This feeling is compounded by the fact that communication after the project has been submitted lacks the duplex nature evident earlier in the module. Throughout the teaching of the module tutors and students are in frequent contact with discussion of the students work and progress occurring regularly. In contrast, once the final interface has been submitted detailed written feedback is produced and made available to students but there is no automatic dialogue. Students may arrange an appointment to discuss their results with the module leader but this happens very infrequently leaving a gap in the feedback to staff. Although staff mark together and discuss the standard of students’ work this gap is likely to persist until (and unless) the tutor teaches the students again. In this case that will not happen until the next academic year when the two cohorts of students who take the HCI module study a related module Multimedia Learning Technologies and Interface Design. It is often during the teaching of this module that the success or failure of the strategies used in the previous years’ delivery of HCI become apparent. The module is delivered in a broadly similar way to HCI and watching the students embark upon the project-based coursework is often very revealing.
Additionally students are expected to create a portfolio of work throughout their course. Any piece of work that they are pleased with is initially included but they are encouraged to review and refine the contents periodically. This activity is intended to encourage students to reflect on what they have learned and, hopefully, to develop greater self-awareness. Students, the graphic design students in particular, often comment “Looking back on this after studying HCI, I wouldn’t include it because …” The depth of their critical analysis is often impressive. I feel that this type of feedback from students is often a far more useful measure of the success or failure of teaching than more formal metrics.
The difficulty is, of course, that this type of feedback is difficult to quantify and it is difficult, if not impossible, to separate out the contribution made by HCI to a student's development.

Updated: 22 April, 2008 | Site editor | Legal