Student evaluations and the university professor: Caveat professor

Abstract

Research evaluating student ratingsofprofessorsrevealscontinuedcontroversy. Interpretations of student ratings of professors in terms of face validity are marred by halo affects, the apparent inability of even skilled raters to judge complex behaviors adequately, the salience of personality features in judging tasks, and a host of other variables. Research shows student ratings to be reliable, but design flaws for simple, first order, predictions usually omit the teacher as a cause. Interpretations of research are confusing because of justifications that indiscriminately involve nomological and applied models. Rating scale peculiarities, questionable validity, and scholastic homogeneity lead to diverse professional attitudes towards student opinions of professors, with a learner or consumer emphasis occupying the extremes. Several evaluation schemes are noted along with behaviors that tend to produce favorable student opinions.Interest in students evaluating professors in order to improve teaching has a long history and began early in American education (Boyce, 1915). The idea is based on the belief that students, because of their exposure to professors, should know best whether teaching is adequate and whether they are learning.The implementation of the idea is simplicity itself. A set of questions is constructed, questions that refer to the professor's clarity of speech, organization, involvement in student learning, presentation of different viewpoints, fairness in grading, work assignments, and other characteristics. The students are given these questions near the end of the semester, but before the final examination, and they anonymously rate the professor. The ratings are then analysed, related to some performance index, and the professor is, ipso facto, evaluated.The program is so simple, straightforward, and appealing that rating techniques have been developed and used at a number of colleges and universities (Centra, 1979). The ratings are used in selecting professors for salary increases, promotions, and tenure, and are sometimes published for the benefit of the students in course selection. Although student ratings are only one part of evaluation programs and separate fromchairperson evaluations, faculty peer ratings, informal student opinions, and other traditional methods of evaluations, they deserve special attention because of their widespread use and possible misinterpretatio m After three-quarters of a century, controversy still exists over interpretations and use of student ratings (Cohen, 1983;Dowell and Neal, 1983;Dunkin and Barnes, 1986;Murray, 1980). Diversity of opinion ranges from "Teacher evalu-

Lecturing Performance Appraisal Criteria: Staff and Student Differences

“…As Cruse (1987) has indicated, student appraisals represent the most common assessment tool; yet it appears that academic staff and students have constructed the notion of good teaching to mean very different things. Thus the validity of such measures must be drawn into question.…”

“…By far the most widely used method has been student appraisal (Cruse, 1987). All the approaches have, however, been shown to suffer from measurement flaws; and a variety of studies has found serious inconsistencies between the judgement by different types of raters.…”

Are Students Telling Us the Truth? A Critical Look at the Student Evaluation of Teaching

“…But can these expectations be used as objective points of reference? Some commentators have asserted that students are the best judge of what they are learning (Cruse 1987;Machina 1987), but this claim has not been widely supported by objective measures. Gremler and McCollough (2002) reported that the students' rating of their adequacy as a student, along with their satisfaction with their own effort and participation in class, were only weakly related to course evaluations.…”

Fiabilidad y validez en la evaluación docente universitaria

“…No obstante, sobre este tema Cruse (1987) señala que los coeficientes de fiabilidad indican que el estudiantado puntúa de forma consistente, de la misma manera en ocasiones diferentes al profesorado, pero ello no significa que estos evalúan exactamente la docencia universitaria, pues a los estudiantes se les plantea un modelo tradicional de docente, el cual se ha ajustado a ciertos factores característicos del "buen profesor". Este argumento es un tema debatido por mucho tiempo, principalmente, porque los rasgos encontrados por los investigadores pueden o no ser apropiados para un tipo de docencia específica, entonces si eso sucede se dejarían sin valorar otros rasgos especiales de la población docente universitaria.…”