Classroom Quality Assurance Using Students As Quality Managers

End-of-term classroom evaluations frequently serve as the primary means for eliciting student feedback regarding teaching effectiveness of the instructor. Since the input from this assessment tool is collected so late in a term, the instructor is unable to make adjustments to enhance the learning experience of the current group of students. For effective teaching, it is important that student input be solicited at regular intervals throughout the term. Over the years, several classroom assessment techniques like “The Minute Paper”, ”Muddiest Point”, “Chain Notes”, etc. have been proposed to address this issue. This paper explores a new collaborative partnership between the instructor and the students based on using student representatives as Quality Managers (QMs) for the course. The advantages, disadvantages and positive impact of involving students as major stakeholders in the assessment process along with results from several courses in an undergraduate Software Engineering Curriculum are presented to demonstrate the impact of the approach on classroom instruction as well as on student learning.