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



"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."

As I've posted before, one friend while chair of a State U maths dept, saw his principal job being keeping the "bad" teachers away from the beginning students. If that execrable teacher published so much and well, didn't he have a batch of grad students? That would be his teaching load. Bad teachers are worse than than none, right? You could have loaded him w/ cmt. assignments, also?





"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."


My interpretation is student evaluations are next to useless, because the ones that are meaningful (the > one sigma instructors from the mean are already obvious.


"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."


However, exception: So you immediately toss the ones w/ no narrative?



What would be meaningful would be five year after grad. follow ups.
bc,


Bob LaMontagne wrote:

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


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