Director of the University of Ghana Academic Quality Assurance Unit (AQUA), Prof. Daniel Kwabena Twerefou, has called on students to be objective in their course and lecturer evaluations.
Students in the University of Ghana are required to evaluate and verify their registered courses with their respective lecturers for a semester before being able to register for their final semester exams.
The Course and Lecturer Evaluation Portal for the First Semester of the 2022/2023 academic year has been opened from Monday, March 27, 2023, and is set to be closed on Saturday, April 8, 2023.
In an interview with UniversNews, Prof. Daniel Kwabena Twerefou noted that students do not take time in evaluating their courses and lecturers objectively.
According to him, this makes it difficult to produce a comprehensive report to be used by university management in reassessing and reforming lecturers to further improve on teaching and learning.
He called on students to exercise objectivity in evaluating their courses.
“I would take this opportunity to tell students to please be objective [with their course evaluation]. We’ve seen situations where students are not being objective because they want to have access to verify their registration for exams because the system is such that you need to first evaluate your lecturers before it gives you access to go ahead. This does not also mean you should just go and do anything you want. We did some focus group discussions with some students, and they were laughing and saying that is what they do. It is not fair. We have to take lecturers seriously. They are our fathers; they are our mothers. You should know that these things that you are doing are helping us to perfect the system so that maybe when your children and your grandchildren come here, they will see a perfect system that was based upon your objective assessment of what is happening here.”
Prof. Twerefou also revealed that graduate students and distance learning students have a lower validity rate with their course and lecturer evaluations compared to undergraduate students.
He attributed it to these students inadequate participation in the course and lecturer evaluation exercises.
“Consistently, the validatory rate for graduate students and students in distant learning has been relatively low compared to undergraduate students. This suggests that graduate students and also distance learning students are not participating in this activity quite often. So I am appealing to graduate students and distance education students to make sure that they go and evaluate their lecturers. It is very important.”
Prof. Twerefou went on to assure students that the evaluation would be anonymous, as no lecturer would know which of their students evaluated them.
“Go and evaluate your lecturers with your numbers. We need forty percent of the students who have registered to be able to have the report validated. No lecturer can do anything to you because the system keeps your identity hidden from the lecturer, and with this one, I think I will stick my neck out.”
