I think there are now many studies that show that student
evaluations measure primarily student "satisfaction" with a course and its
instructor. Those surely are important things to measure, but we should
also bear in mind that there are two things that student evaluations do
not measure. Namely, teaching effectiveness and student learning.
Mark
Dr. Mark H. Shapiro
Physics Department
California State University, Fullerton
P.O. Box 6866
Fullerton, California 92834-6866