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Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

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Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#51

Post by joe_the_user »

Y7ZCQtNo39 wrote: post #6

We 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…

Also, the biases pointed out in these reviews aren't unique to academia. Gender and age biases exist everywhere.

But alternative isn't bias someplace else. The alternative is engaging in biased activity or not doing to.

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#52

Post by duchenne »

A possible solution would be to split the job, to avoid conficts of interest. One teacher teaches. Another one grades. When I was studying in France in "prépa", all students wanted to get a real evaluation of their level, because the really important exam to enter the best universities was organized nation-wide. But, this is hard to organize in private universities where students are also clients. Which parent would pay 40k$/y to be told that his kid does not study well? Maybe, here also, to avoid conflicts of interest, the job can be split. One university teaches. Another organization grades.

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#53

Post by waterpigcow »

travisoneill1 wrote: post #48
dragonwriter wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The student fees and tuition are mostly paid for by government backed student loans. There really isn't any private education in the US past high school.

I don't see the government paying for my college... In my experience a majority of my friends have or are on track to have student debt from having to pay for college.

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#55

Post by mcguire »

cortesoft wrote: post #43
Y7ZCQtNo39 wrote: post #6

We 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…

> Regarding professors wanting to keep review data tightly sealed: in my view, if you can't by public disclosure of your evaluation, then you either don't feel you're meeting expectations, or have no desire to improve in areas where students feel improvement could be made. 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…

I'm sure many professors would agree.

Perhaps the engineering statistics professor I met who bragged that no one ever got an A on his final, because teaching wasa competition between him and the students. And the government professor I had who was inordinately proud of the fact that his course was required because three soldiers from Texas stayed in China after the Korean war and spent the rest of the first class going around the room having students introduce themselves and then mocking them. (I dropped the class the next day.) And a number who were just disorganized and incompetent, but protected by their relationship with other faculty. And the professor who was given tenure for political reasons, after threatening to fail an entire class (of a required course) of computer science undergrads because they weren't electrical engineering great students.

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#56

Post by nijave »

the_jeremy wrote: post #31
azhenley wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says who? Why can't it be used to evaluate my individual learning/effort? Grades only make sense to compare within the same class at the same university during the same semester.

Grades are relative to other people. That's the point of places asking for GPA. If you were just evaluating your effort / learning, your grades could just say "learned a lot" or "made a good effort". But GPA is a way to discriminate between potential candidates for schools/businesses, and thus needs to be quantifiable and comparable.

The increase in technical interviews and decrease in reliance on GPA/grade suggest that's generally a poor metric

It's fairly easy to boost your GPA by mixing in easy courses

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#57

Post by dragonwriter »

travisoneill1 wrote: post #48
dragonwriter wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The student fees and tuition are mostly paid for by government backed student loans. There really isn't any private education in the US past high school.

> The student fees and tuition are mostly paid for by government backed student loans.

Which the student is required to repay, but in any case are not from the chartering government.

> There really isn't any private education in the US past high school

There are plenty of private beyond-high-school educational institutions that don't qualify for government financial aid and thus rely on purely private financing, so even if you consider “accepting government issued loans” as making an institution not-private, there is plenty of private education.

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#58

Post by [deleted] »

waterpigcow wrote: post #24

It is my suspicion that the attitude of american students towards their professors is perhaps a function of the privatization of schools. since students are paying for their education they feel entitled to a good grade regardless of performance. I would like to know others thoughts on this. I don't know much about post secondary education in Europe but it seems different from the American collegiate system somehow.

[deleted]

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#59

Post by devonkim »

ccleve wrote: post #14

If the school would force teachers to grade on a curve, the problem would go away. Teachers would have only a limited budget of high grades to give away. Grading on a curve is not without problems, particularly when class sizes are small, but it has a lot of benefits. It makes it easier to compare students across schools when the schools use the same curve.

You’re saying something like Cravath would improve the situation and be fairer assessments than grading on absolute scores. I was in a class where a curve was non-existent - 30% of the class got above 90%, 45% got below 60%. What would be “fair” then?

Perhaps methods to decouple evaluation scores from student grades should be better explored without antagonizing anyone? Perhaps scores after the first week should be compared to scores mid-way and then last?

Maybe all of that temporal basis is flawed too and we need to try crazier things. A weirder option could be to randomize the evaluations given back to teachers and to have the teachers select which ones seem to be theirs and some consideration is given to professors that are accurate for themselves. Basically it’d be a test of whether a teacher could identify their own teaching methods’ strengths and faults in contrast with other teachers’ and encourage diversity in styles among faculty. If a teacher wants to grade hard, I think they should be free to do so if it’s shown to be in students’ best interests. This is vaguely similar to how classifiers in machine learning training works but with a really different goal in mind.

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#60

Post by Y7ZCQtNo39 »

shanghaiaway wrote: post #44
Y7ZCQtNo39 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If the doctor chose one of the sealing methods over the other which you preferred, you gave a lower score of because of it, it still is not an indication of the quality of the treatment you received. You wouldn't have been qualified to determine the best method.

When you review feedback collected (in any situation analogous to what you mention), you take that into account.

What if the feedback also said the doctor wasn't personable? Maybe the doc could be a bit warmer with his patients... and a patient would be absolutely qualified in determining whether or not that bedside manner is present.

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