I'm pretty skeptical of the claims in this - it'd be interesting to see actual data. Evaluations are one of the extremely few levers students actually have to pull when dealing with a terrible teacher. I'd expect that given an entire class' worth of evaluations you'd be able to strip outliers and get some genuine useful responses. Though the worst professor I had at RPI held our grades hostage until the evaluations w…
Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students
41–50 of 244 posts
Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students
#42We pushed very hard at my alma mater to publicize course/teacher evaluations. We eventually got the University to accept iff a minimum participation rate was met (on a per course basis-- so it wasn't all or nothing. We'd get a subset of the data when enough participation occurred. We considered this reasonable, since if very few students participate, the data isn't all that meaningful). Regarding professors wanting t…
Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students
#43We pushed very hard at my alma mater to publicize course/teacher evaluations. We eventually got the University to accept iff a minimum participation rate was met (on a per course basis-- so it wasn't all or nothing. We'd get a subset of the data when enough participation occurred. We considered this reasonable, since if very few students participate, the data isn't all that meaningful). Regarding professors wanting t…
There is also the third option, which the author is arguing for: that the professors do not think the ratings are an accurate reflection of their teaching skills.
Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like with healthcare recipients, students don't necessarily know what they need and therefore aren't able to accurately rate providers.
In some aspects yes, in others no. I accidentally cut myself a little too deep while doing dishes a couple years ago (opaque, soapy water and sharp surfaces don't mix well). I couldn't get the bleeding to stop (without constant pressure held for about an hour), so I went to urgent care. I knew that I needed stitches or that "glue" they use to seal wounds. I didn't care which solution the Doctor picked, but I knew I n…
Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students
#45We pushed very hard at my alma mater to publicize course/teacher evaluations. We eventually got the University to accept iff a minimum participation rate was met (on a per course basis-- so it wasn't all or nothing. We'd get a subset of the data when enough participation occurred. We considered this reasonable, since if very few students participate, the data isn't all that meaningful). Regarding professors wanting t…
Like with healthcare recipients, students don't necessarily know what they need and therefore aren't able to accurately rate providers.
Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students
#46To be honest, I'm not sure how teachers get and keep their jobs, but as students are graded on their studying skills, I feel like teachers should be graded every fews years on their teaching skills. My girlfriend is studying in a distance university, so she basically never meets any of her teachers. This year she has to do practices at a chosen company, and she got a teacher assigned to her who is supposed to "help"…
Well, to be honest, I really wish everyone who wants to one more hurdle in front of teachers should understand the correlation between bad teaching and teachers having a low-paid, unrewarding and effectively abusive job.
Lousy teachers keep their job because no one highly competent wants these jobs. Lousy teachers keep their job because a huge array of bureaucratic song-and-dance exists and people good at that can be bad at teaching.
I'm sorry you had that experience but you might consider looking at the system. Corporate customer support is terrible, let's all call for more test-of-competence for these low paid flunkies too. That will address the problem.
Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like with healthcare recipients, students don't necessarily know what they need and therefore aren't able to accurately rate providers.
In some aspects yes, in others no. I accidentally cut myself a little too deep while doing dishes a couple years ago (opaque, soapy water and sharp surfaces don't mix well). I couldn't get the bleeding to stop (without constant pressure held for about an hour), so I went to urgent care. I knew that I needed stitches or that "glue" they use to seal wounds. I didn't care which solution the Doctor picked, but I knew I n…
Many students are there not because they want to learn but because they want to get that piece of paper that is the ticket to a successful career. A teacher forcing them to learn, to spend time and effort studying and working, is not seen as a positive if your goal is simply to get a degree. The ideal teacher for them is someone who just give you an A no matter what. That would be the quickest and easiest way to guarantee achieving that goal.
This is the true issue here - the disconnect between what many students want from a university education and what that education is actually supposed to be.
Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> privatization of schools Hmm? There has always been private schools. Nothing is new about them
Over the last several decades, US public colleges and universities have generally seen a declining share of funding from the chartering governments, relying more on business activity plus student fees. This is probably what is being referred to.
Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students
#49This is a short commentary piece, not exactly much there. There's some interesting comments, the one at the top right now says "They are no doubt imprecise, but for a majority of the faculty the scores form a tight bunch around a mean. Newer faculty are likely to have lower scores, so it is often times useful to sit down with them and review the feedback and talk about ways to improve. A few faculty members continual…
Of course this comment assumes that higher scores means better teaching.
FWIW, my experience both as a prof and as an evaluator of profs is that when students are reasonable good their comments, in general, are reasonably useful. After all, they are in the room and they see what is happening.
The problem is that when students diverge from reasonably well-prepared and reasonably hard-working, their responses diverge from valuable. It is a kind of Dunning–Kruger, where you get evaluations that are hard to reconcile with any kind of learning goals standard.
All this would be mitigated if there were multiple measures. But there are not, at least in practice that I've seen.
It is a problem. As an evaluator you want to give people credit for doing a good job. But it can be hard to tell.
As a prof for many years, I know how to increase evaluations. (I don't agree that it is grades; I recently had a fifth year review and calculated the correlation between my grades and class evaluations for those years and r^2 was basically zero.) But the things that increase evaluations are not very tied to increasing learning and are certainly not tied to increasing the amount of material covered.
Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students
#50To be honest, I'm not sure how teachers get and keep their jobs, but as students are graded on their studying skills, I feel like teachers should be graded every fews years on their teaching skills. My girlfriend is studying in a distance university, so she basically never meets any of her teachers. This year she has to do practices at a chosen company, and she got a teacher assigned to her who is supposed to "help"…
To be honest, I'm not sure how teachers get and keep their jobs, but as students are graded on their studying skills, I feel like teachers should be graded every fews years on their teaching skills. Well, to be honest, I really wish everyone who wants to one more hurdle in front of teachers should understand the correlation between bad teaching and teachers having a low-paid, unrewarding and effectively abusive job.…