Suitable questions to apply to the BTA teaching and learning dictionary

The BTA Teaching and Learning Dictionary has been developed specifically for use with course evaluations. Not all questions in a course evaluation will be appropriate to apply the BTA Teaching and Learning Dictionary for analysis. Multiple choice questions, yes, no questions and other inquiries with a limited selection of possible answers can be easily quantified using other tools for quantitative analysis. Those that will provide the most meaningful analysis using the BTA Teaching and Learning Dictionary are the open-ended questions that are intended to elicit feedback on improvements that can be made to the teaching and learning experience.

Ideal Questions

The BTA Teaching and Learning Dictionary is a suitable choice for analyzing comments in response to open-ended questions that are focused on teaching and learning improvement.

• What are the strengths and weaknesses of this course?
• How could the instructor improve the course?
• How do you think the instructor could improve this course?
• Describe the most helpful/effective aspect(s) of the course.
• What were some of the positive and negative attributes of the course?
• What aspects of this course are in most need of improvement?
• Please discuss the reasons for your overall rating of the instructor.
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the instructor?
• What can this instructor do to improve teaching effectiveness in the classroom?
• This unit could be changed in the following ways to improve my learning:

Less than Ideal Questions

Questions with a limited selection of possible answers do not make good choices for Text Analytics.

• Would you recommend this course to other students? Explain.
• Would you recommend this instructor to other students? Explain
• To what extent do you agree with the following statement? This course has taught me a great deal about xxxx.
• Please make any additional comments you may have about this course.

Questions that are too general and won't produce meaningful text analytics results using the BTA Teaching and Learning Dictionary.

• Any additional comments?
• Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about this course?
• Did the professor inspire you to learn in this class?
• What is the most important thing you took away from this class?
• How have you benefited from taking this course?
• Describe your most significant learning experience in this course.
• In your opinion, what were the best sections in the course. Why?