Assessing the Impact of Teaching

University teaching can have a positive impact, a negative impact, or no impact. This article describes indicators of the impact of university teaching at the unit level. Teaching-impact indicators can be organized by the main beneficiary of the teaching: students; others, such as employers and clients, who interact with the students; the university; the department; and the instructors. Some teaching-impact indicators, such as student satisfaction with teaching, are commonly assessed. Other teaching-impact indicators, such as the percentage of students who complete a unit, could be assessed with routinely collected data. There are also teaching-impact indicators that require specific types of data, such as the results of knowledge tests of equivalent difficulty before and at the end of a course. Other types of impact data involve the effects of a course on individuals with whom the students interact in some way as part of a learning experience. Potential uses of teaching-impact data include evaluating instructors and improving teaching at the level of the individual instructor and across educational organizations and departments.