Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by xtrapolate » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 1:52 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #185

JacKTrocinskI wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main idea here is that student evaluations only make sense if we assume that students are actually interested in acquiring knowledge, competences, or values, however if their main aim in a course is a good grade then their evaluations suddenly hold little value since they will rate "easy" instructors highest.

Isn’t it up to the universities to provide a majority their value in the form of education rather than in the form of a credential? Not only do such institutions seemed to be concerned about cancerously growing credentialism, they’ve embraced it as a money money making scheme. See e.g. the explosion of terminal masters programs. You reap what you sow.

> "isn’t it up to the universities to provide a majority their value in the form of education"

I'm not sure how this statement addresses my claims.

How do we measure/quantify the quality of education? I claim that the way students feel about the staff and the institution should be taken into account, rather than dismissed.

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

#192

Post by wahern » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 1:56 PM UTC

Fomite wrote: post #128

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.

Grading on a curve statistically should mean that a fixed number of my students must fail my course. ...I don't really accept that.

Yes, accept that fixed number could be 0. Often a curve might be A-D, not A-F. And there are many shapes of curves. You choose the shape based on what you're trying to achieve. In this day and age a curve that requires as many Ds as As might not be tenable, but that doesn't mean you can't enforce some statistical distribution to help manage curriculum quality.

The problem with grade inflation isn't just that it becomes more difficult to judge student competency; similarly, it becomes more difficult to judge curriculum quality. If everybody is getting As when the curriculum is challenging, they'll continue getting As if it degenerates. Enforcing a distribution helps you to maintain a stable relationship between the abilities of your student body and the quality of the curriculum.

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

#193

Post by bradleyjg » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 2:00 PM UTC

xtrapolate wrote: post #191

bradleyjg wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t it up to the universities to provide a majority their value in the form of education rather than in the form of a credential? Not only do such institutions seemed to be concerned about cancerously growing credentialism, they’ve embraced it as a money money making scheme. See e.g. the explosion of terminal masters programs. You reap what you sow.

> "isn’t it up to the universities to provide a majority their value in the form of education" I'm not sure how this statement addresses my claims. How do we measure/quantify the quality of education? I claim that the way students feel about the staff and the institution should be taken into account, rather than dismissed.

You say that the evaluations of students that are only looking for good grades are useless. What colleges are selling and what students are buying, at very high prices, are credentials.

If colleges, and those that work at them, want to be in the education business rather than the credential selling business they ought to take a good long look at where and how they went wrong instead of constantly trying to push the blame onto to people that, again, are just buying what they are selling.

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

#194

Post by sevensor » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 2:03 PM UTC

weliketocode wrote: post #187

Let me a add a wrinkle to the mix specifically in terms of grade inflation. The value of most coursework and any learnings gleaned from it, has dropped significantly. The best value from entering education institutions is instead from job opportunities after. Unfortunately, these opportunities are often based on grades. If the grades are more important than the coursework, then of course students will optimize for it…

I think you'll come to regret this attitude when you reach your mid-30s with no skills other than the concrete procedural skills you picked up on the job. I use my education constantly, and in ways I wouldn't have anticipated. I often see people doing things the hard way because they don't know there's any other way, or passing on opportunities to do something interesting because they don't realize it's even possible.

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

#195

Post by xtrapolate » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 2:05 PM UTC

dual_basis wrote: post #173

JacKTrocinskI wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main idea here is that student evaluations only make sense if we assume that students are actually interested in acquiring knowledge, competences, or values, however if their main aim in a course is a good grade then their evaluations suddenly hold little value since they will rate "easy" instructors highest.

When I was a college instructor I found that when I tried hard - putting a lot of thought into pedagogy, having weekly (open notes) quizzes, assigning challenging but fair homework - I got terrible evaluations, even though the average grade in my class was higher than other teachers who were teaching the same course. When I phoned it in, didn't really try, was very lax with the homework and often made the quizzes tak…

> "When I was a college instructor I found that when I tried hard - putting a lot of thought into pedagogy, having weekly (open notes) quizzes, assigning challenging but fair homework - I got terrible evaluations, even though the average grade in my class was higher than other teachers who were teaching the same course. When I phoned it in, didn't really try, was very lax with the homework and often made the quizzes take-home, I got excellent reviews but the average grade in the class was worse."

It must've been a frustrating experience.

At the same time - you're making a very broad statement here based on a rather personal experience. You went from a certain regimen yielding certain results, to a different regimen yielding different results. There are way too many parameters here to draw conclusions.

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

#196

Post by paulie_a » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 2:05 PM UTC

Fomite wrote: post #162

paulie_a wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand that perspective about being used as a metric to the dean, but as a student I would have loved access to that info. It's kind like any other review system, a couple of bad reviews among many high reviews, you take that into account. but a lot of bad reviews, I'm probably going to avoid that professor, restaurant, product, service etc. It should not be used as precise metric of performance, but as a g…

> Also if you don't care about students giving praise/negative reviews to a friend, that kind of says something. Note I didn’t say I didn’t care what those reviews were. Honestly, they’re probably more nuanced than student Evans and thus more useful in choosing classes.

I misunderstood what you meant, my apologies.

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

#197

Post by chuckgreenman » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 2:06 PM UTC

Sure, evalutations are flawed, but it appears that universities are unable or unwilling to develop other quality measures. For example, this semester I've had a networking professor that would get half way into explaining something interesting and then state that he didn't care about the topic so he didn't prepare to talk about it and we'd be moving on to something else.

I've got an A in that class, but I wouldn't say that I learned much from it due to that attitude. I don't think that the CS department here has any way to tell that something like that is happening without evaluations.

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

#198

Post by bane » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

chuckgreenman wrote: post #197

Sure, evalutations are flawed, but it appears that universities are unable or unwilling to develop other quality measures. For example, this semester I've had a networking professor that would get half way into explaining something interesting and then state that he didn't care about the topic so he didn't prepare to talk about it and we'd be moving on to something else. I've got an A in that class, but I wouldn't sa…

Right. I think anybody reading comments in these review sites can see if students are ranking professors well for being "easy" or if they're ranking them well for being great educators.

The universities I went to for my undergrad and graduate programs both had an informal rating system for professors and I definitely encountered some of both.

One of the most highly rated professors I encountered was also one of the best educators at the school. He had a reputation as being a brutally hard grader. But most of the students who left his classes with some bruises and (what would have been in any other class) a mediocre grade, ached to take more from him because you felt the immense value of his teaching.

I had other professors who taught poorly, tolerated cheating, or gave non-sequitur exams on material they never covered and so on. There was absolutely no recourse or way of providing feedback on these professors and even ones who received universally poor reviews at the end of the semester stayed on and even attained tenure in some cases.

The only real recourse was for students to rank professors amongst themselves and simply starve out poor professors with lack of registrations. That's the only signal universities seem to respond to.

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

#199

Post by Klover » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 2:24 PM UTC

chuckgreenman wrote: post #197

Sure, evalutations are flawed, but it appears that universities are unable or unwilling to develop other quality measures. For example, this semester I've had a networking professor that would get half way into explaining something interesting and then state that he didn't care about the topic so he didn't prepare to talk about it and we'd be moving on to something else. I've got an A in that class, but I wouldn't sa…

Do you have student-staff meetings? It seems some schools do that, and others have never thought of it.

Basically the idea is that a representative of a group of students comes together with other such representatives and school staff (I don’t know the English words, basically the managers of a school) and discusses the good and the bad of what’s going on. I have heard some positive experiences with this method.

If you’re not doing these things, perhaps pitch it to people. Or poll other students and ask someone at the school for an appointment.

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

#200

Post by analog31 » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 2:27 PM UTC

weliketocode wrote: post #187

Let me a add a wrinkle to the mix specifically in terms of grade inflation. The value of most coursework and any learnings gleaned from it, has dropped significantly. The best value from entering education institutions is instead from job opportunities after. Unfortunately, these opportunities are often based on grades. If the grades are more important than the coursework, then of course students will optimize for it…

The grading just gets kicked down the road. Now, because we don't trust your credentials, we give you a coding exam, that is effectively a grade.

Likewise, an open secret is that college work is a simulation of the workplace. Those college students who develop through practice the ability to turn in work on time that makes their teachers happy, will also be able to do the same in the workplace. If you give up the chance to learn it while it's available to you in college, where your only risk is a Zero on an assignment, you will learn it later in the school of hard knocks. Your performance review will be a grade. There are people who come to work knowing how to get good grades, and others who don't.

This is coming from one who struggled to get good grades in college. A goose egg on an assignment is rarely an isolated occurrance.

Knowing educators, and having kids in high school, I know that the kids who miss a deadline during recruiting tend to have already missed many deadlines over the years.

I strongly believe that while credentialism and college brand recognition are real and probably regrettable, if those are your only reasons for attending college, then you are wasting your money and your life, whereas someone who has other reasons for attending the same college is getting a lot more value out of it. But colleges assume they get the same money either way, so it's really your choice.