Rate My Professor Allen Goodchild

Allen Goodchild is the Evaluations Administrator and Student Evaluation Coordinator in the University Quality Advancement Unit (QAU), part of the Academic Division at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. With a BSc and an MSc in Psychology, he possesses more than two decades of professional experience in data science, questionnaire design, and IT. His analytical expertise has influenced diverse areas including student evaluation systems at universities, financial regulation in the UK, accident insurance in New Zealand, and psychological research projects. Before assuming his current role, Goodchild held positions at the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority, Barclays Bank, and New Zealand’s Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC).

At Otago, Goodchild spearheads the development and implementation of student evaluations of teaching (SET) processes and supporting systems. His special interests lie in fostering student engagement to enhance teaching quality, advancing system development, and applying text analysis techniques to student feedback. He has produced key internal documents such as the memorandum on "Additional metrics in student evaluation of teaching summary reports" (January 2020), which introduced Bayesian credible intervals for effectiveness ratings and comparative response rates, and contributions to the Otago Teaching Profile guide. Furthermore, his methodologies incorporate advanced statistical approaches, including 95% credible intervals using Bayesian estimation with finite population corrections to gauge class-wide teaching effectiveness from partial survey responses, alongside benchmarking response rates against similar classes over prior years. Notable peer-reviewed publications co-authored by Goodchild include "Advancing text-analysis to tap into the student voice: a proof-of-concept study" (Goodchild et al., 2019, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education), validating the Quantext tool for automating analysis of open-ended student responses by comparing it to human coding and identifying factors like workload as barriers to SET completion, and "Student perceptions of student evaluations: enabling student voice and meaningful engagement" (Stein et al., 2020, same journal), which explores student attitudes toward evaluation processes. Through these contributions, Goodchild has significantly impacted higher education by enabling rigorous, efficient interpretation of student feedback, supporting evidence-based improvements in teaching and learning at the University of Otago and beyond.