Education Quality Services

The Student Evaluation Questionnaire (SEQ) is being carried out by the Quality Enhancement Support Team (QUEST) of the Centre of Expertise in Learning and Teaching (CELT) of the University of Twente. In close contact with the Quality Assurance departments of the faculties a schedule of modules to be evaluated each quartile is set up. QUEST is responsible for the dissemination of the survey and reporting of results. The SEQ is a standardized questionnaire which allows for comparison of modules within and accross study programmes.

The Student Evaluation Questionnaire (SEQ) for the master programmes is being carried out by Quality Assurance (QA) of the OES department of the faculty of EEMCS. The M-SEQ is a standardized questionnaire which allows for comparison of courses within and accross the study programmes of the faculty of EEMCS.

Procedure

Step 1: list of courses to be evaluated

At the start of each quartile an overview of courses that fall under the responsibility of the EEMCS study programmes and number of participants per course is generated. Based on the nature of a course and the number of participants, the course is signed up for evaluation or not.

• The basic rule is that only courses with 10 or more participants are evaluated
• Mastermath courses and courses offered by 4TU partners are not evaluated by QA EEMCS
• Semester courses are evaluated only once, at the end of its second quartile

The list of courses to be evaluated is send to the EEMCS programme directors for approval.

Step 2: informing teachers

Two weeks before the start of the exams, the teachers of the courses on the list are informed about the upcoming evaluation.

Step 3: open for responses

On the Monday of the final week of the quartile, week 10, the survey is opened for responses. Participating students receive a notification via e-mail with a personal link to the questionnair. The questionnaire will be open for responses till Monday morning, four weeks later. A week after opening, the students receive a reminder.

• Monday Week 10 quartile: questionnaire is opened for responses, students receive invitation for survey via e-mail.
• Monday Week 1 following quartile: students receive reminder via e-mail.
• Monday Week 2 following quartile: if the questionnaire has generated 3 or less responses, the teacher is sent a response notification with the request to stimulate students to fill out the questionnair.
• Monday week 3 following quartile: the questionnaire is closed for responses

Step 4: reporting

Within two working weeks after closing the questionnaire, the teacher* and programme management receive the following documents:

• Automatically generated report with comments from students
• Automatically generated report without comments, meant for publication
• Signal table containing overview of results of all evaluated courses
• Evaluation form to be filled out by the teacher

*For Interaction Technology courses the reports are sent to the programme director only, who will forward them to the teachers.

Each degree programme has a dedicated Education Evaluation Committee for the organisation of panel discussions for the evaluation of modules and master courses. The EEC AM, CRITEEC and CEEP are independent committees run by student assistants of the QA department. The OKC is a sub-committee of the EE Programme Committee, run by teachers and student assistants.

With an Exit Survey are perfomed at the end of the curriculum and evaluate how students have experienced their study programme, and the graduation period more in detail. An Exit Survey is more broad than a Student Experience Questionnaire (SEQ) as also other issues are surveyed. Exit Surveys are tailored to the wishes of the programme. Topics that are usually surveyed:

• Student characteristics
• Study choice satisfaction
• Attainment of programme objectives (Programme Intended Learning Objectives)
• Satisfaction with content and quality of set-up study programme
• Satisfaction with preparation for professional practice
• Satisfaction with teaching staff
• Satisfaction with graduation period (Module 12 or 11 and 12, Final Project)
• Future plans

A Theses Carrousel is an activity a study programme can undertake to recalibrate/benchmark the assessment of theses. As the assessment of theses cannot be anlysed in a statistical way and neither are assessed by one and the examiner, study programmes need to look for ways to guarantee the quality of assessment of theses. One of the possibilities is to organise a Theses Carrousel every three or six years, with the support of QA.

In a Theses Carrousel a randomly selected number of theses per grade category (mark 6, 7, 8 and 9/10) are re-assesed on quality of content by collegue assessors using the same assessment form. The forms of the actual and the re-assessment are then compared and discussed in a meeting. During the meeting with the examiners discuss which factors give rise to a higher or lower mark, establishing a joint understanding about which combination of factors lead to an insufficient or final mark 6, 7, 8 or 9/10.