Evaluation of the FHSS (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences) doctoral program in foreign language education: questionnaire design

Scientific paper - Original scientific paper

• Author: Jasminka Čengić
• Author: Silvija Hanžić Deda
• Author: Ana Gabrijela Blažević
• Editor: Stela Letica Krevelj
• Editor: Renata Geld
• Author's institution: University of Zagreb; Faculty of Teacher Education
• Author's institution: University of Zagreb; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences; (Department of English language and literature)
• Author's institution: University of Zagreb; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences; (Department of Romance languages and literature)
• Scientific / art field, discipline and subdiscipline: HUMANISTIC SCIENCES; Philology; General Linguistics
• Scientific / art field, discipline and subdiscipline: HUMANISTIC SCIENCES; Philology; Anglistics

Abstract (english)

Evaluating academic programs has become an integral part of developing and improving various programs at undergraduate as well as graduate and postgraduate university levels. One of the problems in assessing the quality of university level programs is the fact that most assessment programs rely on student satisfaction surveys only (Hurt, 2004). However, academic programs involve some other dimensions which should be considered in the evaluation process with student satisfaction being only one of them. Other dimensions include meeting the students’ desired outcomes, their relationship with the advisors (Szymanska, 2011) and the variable of the course instructors’ as well as the thesis advisors’ experience (Cuseo, 2003). Furthermore, a comprehensive assessment of academic programs should include a variety of qualitative and quantitative assessment tools. The use of open-ended questions and focus groups are the recommended procedures for general questionnaire design proposed by Brown (2001), Dörnyei (2003) and Demetriou (2005). Ready made instruments cannot always serve the purpose of evaluating specific academic programs. The necessary steps i academic program evaluation, therefore, involve designing instruments that provide enough information for program improvement. From 2006 to 2014 the Doctoral program in foreign language education (FLE) at the FHSS (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences), University of Zagreb (henceforth the Program) was evaluated with the instruments designed by the Program directors. Although the previously used questionnaires managed to reflect the complex picture
of the multitude of dimensions encompassed by the Program, they were not validated instruments.
Therefore, in 2014 the evaluation underwent considerable changes. The idea was to recruit the students themselves in the process of collecting the necessary information about what needs to be included in the new assessment protocol and instrument design. After a period of brainstorming sessions and collaborative meetings between students and the faculty members involved in the Program, a decision was made to design a new questionnaire for evaluating the Program. The aim of this paper is to describe the process of designing the above-mentioned questionnaire.

• Keywords (english): foreign language; education; questionnaire design; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Language: english
• Publication type: Scientific paper - Original scientific paper
• Publication status: Published
• Peer review: Peer review
• Publication version: Published version
• Publication title: UZRT 2016: empirical studies in applied linguistics
• Numbering: pp. 81-89
• ISBN: 978-953-175-662-4
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.17234/UZRT.2016.5
• URN:NBN: urn:nbn:hr:131:743123
• Publication: 2017
• Conference: Title: Univesity of Zagreb Round Table 2016; Acronym: UZRT; Location: Zagreb, Croatia; Organizer: University of Zagreb, University of Pecs; Start date: 2016-06-03; End date: 2016-06-03; Assembly type: Lecture
• Type of resource: Text
• Publisher: FF Press
• Publishing place: Zagreb
• Access conditions: Open access
• Created on: 2020-11-13 14:11:10