And even more evidence that student ratings are harmful garbage.
And just to answer that little question in the back of your mind, no, I'm not fighting student evaluations because I get bad ones; my student evals are always in the top quintile. I oppose them because they're a bad metric of teaching effectiveness and course quality.
Originally shared by Alexander Kruel
Students judge their teachers. Often unfairly
The Economist has analysed 1,289,407 reviews of 1,066 professors and lecturers in New York state.
More: http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21688924-students-judge-their-teachers-often-unfairly-ratings-agency
Are these used as an evaluation tool to judge the effectiveness of the teacher? Does anyone read these?
ReplyDeleteMary Beth Page Mansfield You mean RateMyProfessor stuff? Yes...students read them. Sometimes even faculty and administrators read them, but they're usually taken with a giant grain of salt since they're not a representative sample. That said, data are hard to ignore when it comes to hiring and reappointment decisions.
ReplyDeleteThis is not just sad but also, like you said, harmful.
ReplyDeleteIf you look at the differences, the more technically advanced subjects get rated "horrible" whereas the more "humanistic" subjects get rated "brilliant".
I am not sure if it is because the teachers are bad, the school system is flawed, or simply because the students are lazy. But there is a pretty clear pattern.
Still, there needs to be some form of evaluation metrics for teachers. I have had some really terrific teachers, and I have had some truly terrible ones. Usually the crappy ones didn't do anything so bad as to warrant being reported, but they were still not performing their job as well as they should have been.
ReplyDeleteLooking at student performance isn't enough; students all have different natural abilities which in no way reflect upon their teacher, and likewise with their individual work ethic.
Really, I don't think numeric evaluations are the best solution here. Narrative reviews, however, will tell you a lot more about both the teacher and the student review in question, and whether or not they should be counted as credible. In many ways similar to online product reviews.
One is considered hard and is taught mostly through rout memorization and with little imagination, the other is an interactive and often personal discovery. There is little surprise in this, is there?
ReplyDeleteHell, I had some professors that were both.
ReplyDeleteThe students who like the technical subjects are more cynical than the students who like people?
ReplyDeleteProfessor Axe, who taught introductory calculus, was a brilliant logician. He also stammered and looked a bit like, well, an absent minded professor. I doubt he liked teaching the course, but gave good, clear lectures nonetheless. Best of all, from my perspective, were his optional lectures on the foundations of numbers. He took us from the Paeno postulates to the natural numbers. I sat on the edge of my seat throughout. As a result, I know that addition is commutative instead of merely believing that it is. I loved the man
ReplyDeleteEveryone else rated him badly. But then, they couldn't appreciate what he offered.
Also interesting/troubling: the men are more "brilliant" on every single data point in this graph, just as the women are more "horrible" on every single one.
ReplyDeleteashley bateson - This is higher education, so I believe these students are at the age of eighteen or older.
ReplyDeleteAnnabelle Lee We state who is teaching each course before registration closes, so if a student doesn't want to take it from Prof. A and has a choice, he/she can switch sections.
ReplyDelete