Abstract
A system of collecting student class evaluations was introduced at Nippon Medical School in February 2004: students initially submitted their responses to a questionnaire on paper via multiple-choice answer sheets and free comment forms, but recently, the Jenzabar system has been used to allow students to submit their answers by cellular phone. When a 10-point index was applied to an overall evaluation of teaching performance in the 2004 through 2008 academic years, the overall evaluation of the same teachers was found to have risen by an average of 0.12 point (n=165, Student's paired t-test, p<0.05); when applied to the same subjects/courses, the overall evaluation was found to have fallen by 0.10 point (n=53, Student's paired t-test, not significant). Although a large amount of time and effort is required to collect and compile student evaluations of 80 or more class projects and 230 or more individual teaching staff each year, we feel that the effort involved in providing early feedback to the students and making their education more interactive is worthwhile.
