Exploring students' evaluation of the teaching and learning process at a selected nursing campus in KwaZulu-Natal : lecturers' and students' perspective.

Introduction: The World Bank realizes the importance of investment in higher education for economic growth and social development, greater focus is placed on quality assurance to ensure educational relevance (World Bank, 1994a). Most Governments and Higher Education Institutions have executed policies and practices to determine, promote and reward good teaching (Arthur, 2009; and Smith, 2008). In South Africa, it is compulsory to provide proof of mechanisms used to monitor and evaluate teaching, students are considered important in this role (CHE, 2004c). Objectives: 1.To describe the process of students’ evaluation of teaching and learning at the selected Nursing Campus. 2.To describe the management of feedback obtained from the student evaluation of teaching and learning. 3.To explore how the student evaluation of teaching and learning process can be improved. Methodology: This study used a quantitative, explorative and descriptive design. Convenience sampling was used to select one campus from seven of the KwaZulu-Natal College of Nursing (KZNCN) for the study. All lecturers and students that the criteria were selected. A total of 173 participants, 28 lecturer and 145 student participants from one campus of the KZNCN gave their views on the students’ evaluation of the teaching and learning process in their institution. Two questionnaires were used to collect data, one for each category and analysed using SPSS package version 19. Results: The findings revealed that the majority of lecturers and students believed the main purpose of students’ evaluation of teaching and learning as improving the quality of teaching and learning. It also became evident that students and lecturers were not involved in the development and evaluation of the block evaluation tool. The participants of this study also highlighted that there was neither a clear system, nor guidelines to ensure proper management of data obtained from the evaluation, resulting in students often not receiving feedback from their evaluation process. It also emanated from this study that only minor changes resulted from the evaluation process. The Pearson chi-square tests were conducted and where inappropriate, Fisher’s exact tests were used to test association between categorical variables. The level of significance was set at 0.05. Most of the tests showed no statistically significant differences between the views of the lecturers and those of the students. Conclusions: As evidence from this study and literature in general, it is concluded that students’ evaluation of teaching and learning is not a clear cut process and therefore necessitates reflection on, and proper planning. It was suggested that further research involving additional campuses be undertaken, that would lead to the development of a model that would ; establish a clear framework of requirements, establish supporting policies and guidelines for student evaluation of teaching and learning, and depict how the feedback loop is closed as suggested. This would enhance teaching and learning quality at KwaZulu Natal Nursing College.