Student Evaluation of Teaching [again]
Tis the season ... for Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs), or what some refer to as Student Perception of Instruction. So, I would like to share recent (June 2018) research entitled, "Availability of cookies during an academic course session affects evaluation of teaching."
The authors summarize that "Results from SETs are taken seriously by faculties and form part of a decision base for the recruitment of academic staff, the distribution of funds and changes to curricula. However, there is some doubt as to whether these evaluation instruments
accurately measure the quality of course content, teaching and knowledge transfer. The provision of chocolate cookies had a significant effect on course evaluation. These findings question the validity of SETs and their use in making widespread decisions within a
faculty". This confirms much of the research:
There is no significant correlations between the SET ratings and learning. These findings suggest that institutions focused on student learning may want to abandon SET ratings as a measure of teaching effectiveness (Uttl, White, & Gonzalez, 2016).
There is a need for validating SETs (Setari, Lee, & Bradley, 2016).
There is a need for accurate interpretation of SET data and the appropriate use of that data to evaluate faculty (Linse, 2016).
There is strong evidence that student responses to questions of “effectiveness” do not measure teaching effectiveness (Stark & Freishtat, 2014).
The measure of effectiveness is negatively correlated with SET (Braga, Paccagnella & Pellizzari, 2014).
The relationship between gender and SETs may indicate that the use of evaluations in employment decisions is discriminatory against women. (Mitchell & Martin, 2018).
There are alternatives to gather useful data to determine teaching effectiveness, although they require more time and intentionality than a self-reporting survey. Examples can be found in Berks (2005) article on Twelve Strategies to Measure Teaching Effectiveness or Hargis' (2014) Ten Year Study of Faculty Classroom Observations.
