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Student Evaluations - what's the research say?

By dkung
Posted Tue Oct 03, 2006 at 10:58:09 AM PDT

A few years ago we charged a committee to review the literature on student evaluations and make a recommendation to the faculty. The system we had in place involves a standardized form with 12 questions. The first two are the most standard - and the most cited on campus.
1. Rate the instructor's overall teaching effectiveness.
2. Rate the overall quality of this course.
The committee's report came back very different from what I had expected research on evals to show.
More on the flip...

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After reviewing the literature, here are some of their main findings:

student evaluation scores are moderately correlated with direct measures of student learning (4=.4-.5)
Correlations with instructor self-ratings are similarly moderate (r=.3-.5)
Correlations with ratings by (trained) outside observers are somewhat higher (.4-.75)
Correlations with open-ended student narratives are higher still (.75-.9)
Colleague evaluations correlate less well with direct measures of student learning, instructor self-ratings, observations by trained observers, and student open-ended narratives than do standard student eval-type ratings
There is a weak negative correlation between student evaluation scores and age (older faculty score slightly less well) but, contrary to popular belief, no correlation between student evaluation scores and gender (r=-.02-.02); there is little evidence about relationships between race of professor and student evaluation scores
there is a correlation between teacher expressiveness and student evaluation scores; more expressive teachers score higher
expected course grades are weakly associated with student evaluation scores however, grading that is perceived as overly lenient is negatively associated with scores smaller class size is weakly correlated with higher scores
students tend to evaluate elective courses more highly than required courses (no surprise there to those of us who teach courses which meet gen ed requirements!)
students rate humanities and arts courses higher than social sciences; math and science classes get the lowest scores.

Are these what you'd expect? How does the student eval system at your school compare?

< Developing Your Curriculum Vitae | Ig Nobel Prizes awarded >

Student Evaluations - what's the research say? | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)

[new] Is time of day a factor? (none / 0) (#1)
by brianbirgen on Wed Oct 04, 2006 at 05:22:09 AM PDT

I have often wondered if teachers in the early morning slots have lower evaluations scores than teachers in the middle of the day slots. There is anecdotal evidence that this is the case, but I would like to see it confirmed.

Student Evaluation by kuttushlambu, 10/21/2006 08:09:20 PDT (none / 0)

[new] Evaluations to Be Taken Seriously? (none / 0) (#3)
by Jonny77889 on Wed Feb 13, 2008 at 08:33:48 PM PDT

I wonder if student evaluations are to be taken seriously, especially those for required classes or classes full of students with very poor math skills. It seems to me that many of these classes are the kind of classes that rate the instructor poorly if he is the kind of teacher who does not give A's to everyone, the kind that actually makes them WORK and LEARN to get a good grade. I had many, many students complain just because they actually had to LEARN something to get a good grade. They were so used to math teachers who gave them A's without actually making them do anything that when they got into my class where they had to do something to earn good grades, they complained.

Finally, I had a lot of comments on my evaluations that were completely useless, and it was clear (to me though I wonder if it was to anyone else) that this student viewed the evaluation as a joke!

I think the majority (perhaps the vast majority) of students (at least in required math classes) are too incapable to rate teachers in general and certainly too incapable of rating their own teachers impartially. Why? First of all, they haven't been trained to do so; in other words, no one has taught them what to look for when judging a teacher's skill. Second, they automatically think if they're doing poorly, it's the teacher's fault. But many of these students in lower-level math classes fail because they lack the background skills and study habits to succeed, and many do not even try to learn. So many fail because it's their own fault or their previous teachers' fault for not teaching them and preparing them for college math or their advisors' fault for placing them in a math class where they cannot succeed because they lack the background knowledge the course requires. However, they want to blame the teacher instead of blaming themselves when it's their own fault or they blame the teacher anyway when it's someone else's fault (but either they know this and don't care anyway, or they don't realize the teacher is not to blame).

I had math classes where I didn't learn much, but I knew it wasn't the teacher's fault; it was my own, either because I couldn't keep up with the class or I lacked the background I needed. And I know it takes some maturity to recognize and admit it's your own fault and not the teacher's.

I'm not saying that no evaluations from these courses are serious, and I'm not saying that it's never the teacher's fault when students blame him. I'm just saying that such evaluations sometimes appear much worse than they really should appear and that many of them are unreliable.

Student Evaluations - what's the research say? | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)

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