Systematization of evaluation on teacher training academic activities

Abstract

In this work it has been documented a proposal for the systematization of evaluation on teacher training academic activities or faculty development activities in a higher education institution, which purpose is to expedite the generation of information and to identify the degree of satisfaction in teacher trainees participating in processes, as well as providing feedback to the functions and activities offered at a University Teacher Training Center through automated reports.

An instrument of 25 questions focused on academic aspects was designed to evaluate faculty development activities and was applied in print and in person. However, given the imminent increase in the number of academic activities offered by the Center, and due to the fact that they stopped being in person as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, an analysis of the instrument was carried out, and it was adjusted to: 1) its online application, 2) identify the most relevant academic aspects and 3) recognize the degree of satisfaction of teachers in relation to the faculty development activities in which they participated, resulting in an instrument of 19 questions, 18 on a scale Likert type and one open question.

To support the systematized evaluation of faculty development activities, a validity analysis of the instrument, with the information collected from 804 teachers who participated in some training activity, was carried out. This included two processes: a factor analysis was made on the Likert-type scale questions of the instrument to identify the number of dimensions and factors with the greatest weight, and a qualitative analysis on the content of the open-ended question responses was carried out to identify content categories of these.

Based on the information collected on the evaluation of academic activities and with the use of Microsoft PowerBI data visualization software, a database was generated and the generation of reports, in which a rating of each activity was issued converting the Likert-type scale responses to a numerical rating, was implemented.

From the factor analysis of the instrument, three factors or dimensions were identified: 1) Teacher trainers performance, 2) Materials and content and 3) Management of faculty development activities. These three factors accumulated 59.7% of the variance, which means the highest correlation of the questions grouped in these dimensions and some aspects of improvement were identified for the integration of a third version of the instrument. The exploration of the database through the Microsoft PowerBI software allowed the deployment of a series of reports, both global and by activity, in order to provide information to the Teacher Training Center decision-makers and teacher trainers. Finally, a third version of the instrument was created, composed of a total of 22 questions, 21 on a Likert-type scale and an open one, which also included questions related to the pedagogical design of the training activities, in response to the suggestions originated from the quantitative and qualitative.