Case Study

Hear from your peer, Dr. Bradley Wall

Dr. Bradley Wall (Embry-Riddle) demonstrates how Watermark's AI Course Evaluations streamline faculty review and improve teaching effectiveness.
Headshot of Dr. Bradley Wall, Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

In this interview series, we hear from higher education professionals like you about their experiences with Watermark and how they’re using our AI tools to enhance course evaluations, improve teaching effectiveness, and make an impact on their campus. Hear from Dr. Bradley Wall, Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, as he shares how he’s using Instructor Insights within Watermark Course Evaluations & Surveys to turn student feedback into clear, personalized teaching guidance that supports faculty development. With Instructor Insights, Dr. Wall can quickly identify what’s working, spot opportunities for improvement, and strengthen his annual review process with confidence.

What challenges do you currently face when reviewing and summarizing course evaluation feedback?

When I have large classes with multiple sections, it can be difficult to collect and sort all the written feedback to get an idea of what was just a one-off comment and what was something mentioned by several students.

What was your first impression of the Instructor Insights feature within Course Evaluations & Surveys?

[Instructor Insights] gives a really nice and quick reflection of how the students are feeling without me having to discern all of the comments individually.

What is your favorite part about Instructor Insights?

Instructor Insights can solve my main challenge well and even allow me to look at previous courses for similar comments more easily than scanning through the comments myself. I think it does a good job with how I can see quick takeaways, a summary, and if I want to dive deeper, I can open up the chat and really get into it.

How will these AI capabilities help with faculty evaluation and the faculty annual review process?

The AI is going to look at all of your quantitative and qualitative survey data and student comments and give you an overview of what it thinks are positive, mixed, and negative reviews with evidence from the comments and data. Faculty will have a quick way to figure out what they need to improve on, or what they’re doing well.

This can help me for my annual review when I want to combine all the data and try to summarize my effectiveness. That’s where [Instructor Insights] is really going to shine for me. If I can just get a quick overview of my effectiveness as a faculty member and grab some good comments or things that I need to work on, that is going to save me a lot of time.

How might access to this type of insight benefit early-career faculty who are still learning to interpret feedback effectively?

This tool can quickly read through all the students’ comments and give a summary of things the instructor is doing well and not-so-well. This information can be used, in conjunction with faculty mentors or teaching and learning experts, to improve the delivery or assessment of material. When the faculty closes the loop like this, they will see significant teaching gains in a shorter time.

 

Through innovative AI in higher education solutions like Course Evaluations & Surveys, Watermark empowers educators to transform course evaluations and student feedback into measurable improvements in teaching effectiveness.

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Read more about the features and benefits of Instructor Insights.

 

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