Teachers should be judged on the longitudinal performance of their students. Khan Academy and BlackBoard must have some utterly fascinating data in this regard.
Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students
91–100 of 244 posts
Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
It _is_ a competitive market in many places but the market _isn't_ functioning as it should because of dysfunctional relationships with unions and tenure. Unions? Really? Not administrators and profit institutions cutting college teachers' salaries to the bone, creating a situation adjunct professors literally starve to death in the process. No, unions. And tenure is your other complaint? The job guarantee that no lo…
Are you talking universities or K12? Because everything the parent said is true in K12. Spend 10 minutes at a Jersey City School Board meeting and you’ll see just how aggressive the union is if you even hint at reform. Can’t speak to higher ed though, except tenure for classroom instructors is a real problem. Since they have absolutely zero incentive to be good teachers but instead only engaging in activities that br…
The OP is about college teaching and what I've written is applicable to that. Folks seem to have segued to K12 for some anti-union speechifying in the meantime.
As far as that goes, look at the condition of teachers in Kentucky if you think unions are the problem.
Unions have a fairly inflexible response to most "reform" plans but the problem is most reform plans, as can be seen here, aim to make teacher more insecure, more constrained, more "flexible" but without compensation for that flexibility. Sure, LA, Oakland or New Jersey might look bad but compared to strongholds of non-union teaching, they are paradise.
It would be great to come up with a reform plan that empowered teachers. The unions might fight that but individual teachers probably wouldn't. But the kinds of reform that come often from people lips - more testing and less job security, are rightly resisted by both unions and individual teachers.
Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
It _is_ a competitive market in many places but the market _isn't_ functioning as it should because of dysfunctional relationships with unions and tenure. Unions? Really? Not administrators and profit institutions cutting college teachers' salaries to the bone, creating a situation adjunct professors literally starve to death in the process. No, unions. And tenure is your other complaint? The job guarantee that no lo…
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It _is_ a competitive market in many places but the market _isn't_ functioning as it should because of dysfunctional relationships with unions and tenure.
Whatever your overall, it seems rather unbalanced to blame only unions for the teaching job market. Moreover, how is the job market supposed to work? In the places without unions, you have teachers literally living in cars.
Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students
#94No shit basing compensation on reviews by people who have an overt bias to blame the instructor. The purpose of the review should be purely to provide feedback to the instructor and TA. It should not be available to the administration - the purpose is to help the TA and instructors improve their teaching. Especially if the instructors have tenure and so can’t be fired for failing to teach. Ratings should also be scal…
My university explicitly rewards TAs with high reviews. I swear I’ve walked in on people handing out assignment solutions.
In the US at least you're essentially expected to be a TA as part of most PhD programs, so if your ability to complete your PhD is dependent on the will of students who you might be causing to fail - or you might just not be a good teach - why would you not do that?
Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students
#95I'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…
In America teachers get tenure so your feedback has no impact on them improving. Also if you look at literally any study of them TAs for harder courses get harsher ratings, they get harsher ratings from weaker students. I also spent a number of years as a TA I can say anecdotally that is my exact first hand experience - good reviews in easy courses like graphics, atrocious scores in design of concurrent systems. In f…
As a former TA for one of the "bad" professors, you can somewhat rescue your rating, but you basically have to be a hero, and the professor needs to not be malicious (if the prof wants to fail everyone, not a lot you can do).
You have to attend every lecture (I did anyway), redirect / fix during discussion / lab, help them learn what they need to know to pass the exams, and if you have time, what they should remember when the term is over for their future academic / work careers.
Only bad ratings I recall were from students who only attended the last discussion section; it's hard to teach 10 weeks of theoretical CS in 50 minutes.
Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students
#96One of the main problems with the educational system is that students are evaluated by the same person that teaches them. If the teacher wasn’t the one grading the mean grade of the students would be a decent evaluation of the performance of teacher.
Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students
#97One of the main problems with the educational system is that students are evaluated by the same person that teaches them. If the teacher wasn’t the one grading the mean grade of the students would be a decent evaluation of the performance of teacher.
This is what “high stakes testing” is for. Not that it’s perfect, but the idea is to have objective third-party measurements.
Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students
#98I'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…
I’ve found that the best professors tend to come with higher standards for grading, more involved assignments, and just generally more work involved. This is great if you’re actively interested in learning the subject; most students are not. In which case, its far worse than the shitty teacher, and its reflected in the feedback.
From the perspective of most students, the ideal professor has low grading standards, “good enough” teaching, and most importantly, a “fun” class (primarily by means of humor). Most students are there to get a degree, to get a job. The best teacher according to students is the one that best fits that model (which is generally at odds with the goals of classical academia).
Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students
#99I'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…
I’ve found that the best professors tend to come with higher standards for grading, more involved assignments, and just generally more work involved. This is great if you’re actively interested in learning the subject; most students are not. In which case, its far worse than the shitty teacher, and its reflected in the feedback. From the perspective of most students, the ideal professor has low grading standards, “go…
One of the best classes that I had was very hard in homeworks but was easy on the grading. It was literature and art class taught by a lawyer. I felt that I grew up a bit after that class. The class was also rated high by students
Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students
#100One of the main problems with the educational system is that students are evaluated by the same person that teaches them. If the teacher wasn’t the one grading the mean grade of the students would be a decent evaluation of the performance of teacher.
If another professor wrote the exams for a class they didn't sit in, you'd have the students screaming in unison, "this wasn't discussed in class!" Not exactly disagreeing with the idea, but students have been normalized to the idea that, with enough studying and concentration, any exam can be aced. When they feel like they've been cheated by the system they get discouraged, making a harmful learning experience.