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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

#111

Post by craigzucchini »

avani wrote: post #88

Student reviews are also ridiculously sexist in the average case. In a recent study, the students rated identical teachers differently enough by gender that actual teaching performance was lost in the noise: https://academic.oup.com/jeea/advance-article-abstract/doi/1... Another pair of studies showed that identical courses where students thought instructors were male rated higher than those that had a female profess…

From what I gathered from the mobile version (which may be paired down), the difference was not that significant, particularly in the analysis of evaluations and RMP submissions. Would have liked to find more on class composition, and would be curious how reproducible the relatively minor absolute differences would be, but "ridiculously sexist" seems a bit hyperbolic. Do you have a specific take on those studies that inform your opinion? I could be very well working with not enough information here.

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

#112

Post by kruczek »

katsura wrote: post #33

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. 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"…

> I feel like teachers should be graded every fews years on their teaching skills.

They are, or at least used to be. At least at high schools in Poland, teachers would get occasional visits from higher ups who observed their lessons and would give them feedback.

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

#113

Post by travisjungroth »

dgellow wrote: post #110
tamaharbor wrote: post #87

I had taught two semesters of a basic pharmacy course at a local community college. Of the 20 or so student reviews I received, 80% of them mentioned my 'ta-tas'. Enough said.

What does “ta-tas” mean?

Breasts.

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

#114

Post by YorkshireSeason »

avani wrote: post #88

Student reviews are also ridiculously sexist in the average case. In a recent study, the students rated identical teachers differently enough by gender that actual teaching performance was lost in the noise: https://academic.oup.com/jeea/advance-article-abstract/doi/1... Another pair of studies showed that identical courses where students thought instructors were male rated higher than those that had a female profess…

   students rated identical teachers
Did you actually read critically the papers you cite?

[1] claims to be comparing "identical teachers" but [1]'s sole claim to courses taught by male and female instructors is "neither students’ grades nor self-study hours are affected by the instructor’s gender". Clearly those are hardly the only factors relevant to teacher quality. Moreover [1] claims to use "objective measure of the instructors’ performance", and which includes -- I kid you not -- "self-reported number of hours students spent studying for the course".

[2] is similarly vague, and claims that "the courses were identical: all lectures, assignments, and content were exactly the same in all sections" only to to state in the next sentence that the "only aspects of the course that varied between Dr. Mitchell’s and Dr. Martin’s sections were the course grader and contact with the instructor". Well, isn't "contact with the instructor" significant?

Both [1, 2] use p-values [3], which doesn't increase confidence in the results.

As an aside, neither paper discusses potential bias the authors might have, in particular their own social desirability bias [4].

[1] https://academic.oup.com/jeea/advance-article-abstract/doi/1...

[2] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/03/14/study-says-st...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_desirability_bias

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

#116

Post by zeroname »

Grade inflation in "American Literature"? Shocking, indeed. Not only are these poor students paying ludicrous sums of money for worthless education, their meaningless grades are now even easier to obtain.

Folks, let's just be honest and admit that this kind of education is for entertainment purposes only and therefore the consumers are the rightful arbitrators on who does the entertainment.

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

#117

Post by augbog »

As someone who had a teacher who literally was tenured, had the absolute worst reviews ever on the website and wherever, literally recorded his lectures once and now goes to lectures just to answer questions (which btw he barely answers em he sometimes just posts to the lecture video) I strongly feel evaluating teachers is a necessary thing.

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

#119

Post by Fomite »

tamaharbor wrote: post #87

I had taught two semesters of a basic pharmacy course at a local community college. Of the 20 or so student reviews I received, 80% of them mentioned my 'ta-tas'. Enough said.

I've read the evaluations of a few of my female colleagues. Without fail, a good portion of them are toe-curlingly sexist.

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

#120

Post by Fomite »

sdinsn wrote: post #26
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.

> privatization of schools Hmm? There has always been private schools. Nothing is new about them

Two things:

1) I would have used "corporatizations" of schools. Running universities as if they were businesses, framing students as customers, etc.

2) Tuition has become a bigger share of the budget for public universities as federal funding has been stagnant and state funding has been cut, which feeds the same problem.

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