Focus groups as a form of student evaluation of teaching

Robert Muller, Carol Collins and Sue Knight, University of South Australia, South Australia

This paper will fill a gap in the scholarship of teaching and learning on focus groups as a form of student evaluation of teaching. This 'gap' may be due to the fact that focus groups are seen as an unofficial form of evaluation in a system which emphasises Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) and the Course Evaluation Instrument (CEI). They are also seen as an adjunct to these more formal types of evaluation, to gain deeper understandings of student opinions. Despite the unofficial and adjunct status of focus groups, this form of student evaluation needs to be theorised and considered in the literature. Staff who request focus groups, often do so after checking their SETs and CEI scores. They often take the negative comments to heart, without placing enough emphasis on the positives. The amount of perceived negative comments from large course groups, sometimes up to 300 students per study period, often overwhelms academic staff and they find it difficult to establish a starting point from which to begin to improve their course or their teaching. Focus groups provide the opportunity to delve deeper into the reasons why students may be satisfied or dissatisfied with a particular course. Focus groups also place some measure of accountability upon students to justify their evaluations of teaching and courses. For this reason, focus groups are a valuable form of evaluation, thus needing to be theorised and considered seriously in the literature. Until now, this has not been the case.

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