Hello boys and girls,

For those of you that have done any demonstration work before, I was wandering if your university/department has any kind of system in place for demonstrators to get any feedback on how good/bad they are doing? This is a point I am going to raise at our next student/staff liaison meeting. I don't think it's enough for postgrads to say: "I have done demonstration work. It was fun". I think we stand to gain more from the experience if we know what we are doing right, what we are doing wrong, what we need to improve on etc.

What do you all think? I would appreciate your views/comments. Thanks.

At the end of each semester, we give the students feedback forms to fill-in. Data is collected, but I've never personally been told if I'm doing well/badly or how to improve. Feedback could be a good idea.

I suppose the best indicator of how you are doing is if the uni reappoints you next year to teach the same module!

In my department we have a peer review system, even for research students taking on teaching duties. You go and sit in a tutorial/lab demo for a colleague and they do the same for you and then swap comments on teaching style etc (using guidelines). It's all very formal, has to be written up properly and sent off (God knows who to).

We're videoed and forced to watch the (often unintentionally amusing) results.

I run around too much, apparently. And it's true! I saw it with my own eyes.

Thanks for your comments guys. helpful stuff. Much appreciated!

Our students graded us! They were given questionnaires at the end. A report was compiled as well. All the aspects of the course could be graded by percentage (including staff and demonstrators) from the students responses. anonymous additional comments were also included in the report.

I collected feedback myself as part of a graduate teaching assistant module. I gave the students on my bench sheets of paper and asked them to write headings with 'stop' 'start' and 'continue'. Under each heading I asked them to write things they'd like me to stop/start/continue doing to help them learn in the lab and post them anonymously in a box at the back of the lab. It was pretty useful (and quite an ego-rub in the end!)

thanks again for the replies. I pitched a few ideas at a meeting today. the video and peer review ideas went down like a lead balloon, but was helpful nonetheless. Integrating demonstration feedback with the end-of-term questionnaires seemed more popular with the staff and students, but if this turns out to be a crappy system, i might take it upon myself and use apple_scruff's idea - i could always do with an ego-rub!

i always gave out questionnaires to the students mid and end of term with stuff like: i would like more of.../less of.../i liked this.../i didn't like this. very simple. i though it was cute when one of the guys wrote "i would like more of - you!"