Interpreting & Using Student Ratings Data
In preparation of our First Annual “Celebrate Teaching”, we would like to share research on interpreting student rating of instruction data. The paper includes 80 years of research, providing insights about effective teaching. I have summarized some of the faculty development points below, from the 2017 paper by Linse entitled, "Interpreting and using student ratings data: Guidance for faculty serving as administrators and on evaluation committees”:
"Student ratings are … perception data; not faculty evaluations; not measures of student learning. (Clayson, 2009)"
“…nearly all of the behaviors practiced by excellent teachers can be learned.”
“…faculty should not simply be “sent to the teaching center” in response to low student ratings because the teaching center should not be seen as a punishment, but as a support.“
“…students give instructors higher ratings when students are expected to take on some share of responsibility for learning (Benton & Li, 2015)”
There was once great hope that the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL; Boyer, 1990) would evolve so that scholarly teaching would “count” for more in the promotion and tenure process (Huber, 2002). Things have changed so that SOTL does “count” in promotion and tenure decisions.”
"The most common additional sources of data about the faculty member’s teaching include written student feedback, peer and administrator observations (Miller & Seldin, 2014), internal or external reviews of course materials (Chism, 2007; Miller & Seldin, 2014), teaching portfolios (Seldin, 1999; Zubizarreta, 1999) and teaching scholarship (Berk, 2013; Miller & Seldin, 2014).
