The evaluation of the teaching activity of the teaching staff is a fundamental tool for the improvement of the quality of the teaching and learning processes. For this reason, at the beginning of this year Spain’s National Agency for Quality Assessment andAccreditation (ANECA) called for a participative process to open the debate on the evaluation of teaching quality to the university community and to gather the opinion of the people most directly affected by this issue.
The evaluation of the teaching activity is currently channeled through the DOCENTIA Program, which is promoted by ANECA together with the Quality Agencies of the Autonomous Communities of Spain, as a set of criteria and references that each university particularizes according to its characteristics and strategy. The first version of this program was launched in 2007 and currently 78 universities have participated in some phase of the program.
The debate convened by ANECA, which took place throughout the month of February, included the participation and contribution of ideas not only from university faculty, but also, for the first time, from the student body.
This consultation has allowed to know their opinions about teaching evaluation and their proposals, as well as to gather their expectations and specific needs, and is part of ANECA’s commitment with transparency and participation in the internal debates and in the processes which affect the university community.
Some of the issues raised by the participants were related to student surveys (elements to be assessed, weight of the survey in the scale, application procedure, etc.), the assessment of different aspects (such as the orientation of final degree projects, attention to Erasmus students, the gender perspective or the inclusion of the assessment of other teachers of the degree or the area, etc.), the publication and assessment of open teaching material, recognition through salary complements or support for faculty for their improvement.
