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Re: [Phys-l] online student evaluations vs in-class studentevaluations

This purely anecdotal, but we have been doing student evaluations here for a
number of years. I was chair through part of that time, and the new chair
still shares information with me to help her make decisions consistent with
what we have done in the past.

Anyway, from what I have observed, the students are dead on correct in
identifying the very best and the very worst of faculty. Poor teachers who
are easy graders are rarely given an overall 4 or 5 on a 5 point scale. Only
the truly good teachers get that. Likewise, anyone receiving an overall
score in the 0 to 1 range are truly bad, regardless. Students are not just
whining about hard work or low grades when they give marks that low.

Unfortunately, scores in the middle range don't seem to follow a discernable
pattern that provides useful information to a chair or useful feedback to a
faculty member.

The thing that frustrated me as a chair was having an incredibly poor
teacher in my department who eventually reached full professor ranking
because of publications. I wanted desperately to fire him, but couldn't
because he had tenure.

Back to the point, I don't really think it matters whether the evaluations
are in-class or on-line. The best feedback for adjusting your teaching seems
to come from those students who take the time to fill out the comments
portion of the evaluation. The multiply choice parts usually don't fit the
course well enough for the students to relay the nuances of how the course
fit their expectations and overall educational goals - unless it was either
complete satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

Bob at PC

-----Original Message-----
From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu [mailto:phys-l-
bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu] On Behalf Of Bernard Cleyet
Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2006 1:56 PM
To: Forum for Physics Educators
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] online student evaluations vs in-class
studentevaluations

If I remember correctly there was a thread in which a poster suggested
student evaluators did only harm -- the arguments were, IMAO, quite
cogent -- perhaps it was an IP published screed.

bc

rgrandy@pop.mail.rice.edu wrote:

I don't know about bias, but last spring when our administration
switched from paper evaluations to onliine the response rate dropped
from around 90% to about 40%!


Richard Grandy
Rice University
Houston TX USA



It's time for student evaluations, and I have two choices. There's (a)
the
traditional method of giving the students a paper form to fill in in-
class,
and (b) an online version of the same form, presumably to be filled in
at
their convenience.

One might expect that the online version would produce a reduced
response
rate. Only students with strong opinions (either positive or negative)
would actually take the time to respond to a survey if they're not put
on
the spot in a classroom. One could further imagine that this might bias
the
results, depending on which of these extremes is a more powerful
motivator.

Does anyone know of a comparison between these two methodologies, and
does
anyone have any anecdotal evidence that would suggest which way (if any)
a
bias is induced?

Richard Zajac
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_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l