I have worked as a professor in three universities over the last 38 years, and only in one did student's evaluations include standard deviation values, which show the level of variation within a data set. I believe that if this statistical measure is absent, the numbers are almost meaningless.

For example, if a professor obtains an average rating of 5 or 6 on a scale of 1 to 10, a superficial interpretation of the data would be that she/he is a poor or mediocre educator.

But what if the professor is highly qualified, punctual, committed, strict, etc., and half the group (let us say, the serious students, that performed well and attended regularly) rated each category with high grades of 9 or 10, and the other half (the lazy students that didn't do the homework, didn't attend most of the sessions, and are upset about their low grades) gave ratings of 1 or 2.

One the other hand, consider the case of the poorly qualified professor that often arrives late to class, doesn´t prepare his presentations, but awards high scores to all students in an attempt to win them over. The serious students might give him low ratings, the lazy students might give high ratings, and the average would be again somewhere in the middle.

Thus a rating of 5 or 6 could indicate a poor or mediocre teacher in the opinion of all the students (in which case she/he probably is a poor or mediocre teacher); the same rating could indicate an excellent professor who is being punished for his strictness by the lazy students and rewarded by the serious students; or it could indicate an incompetent professor who is being rewarded by the lazy students and punished by the serious students.

Including the standard deviation would show if the group as a whole is in agreement or if opinion is divided. In the latter case, the results should be discarded as unreliable, and other means should be employed to determine what is happening.

It would be a simple matter for the software used to report the results of student's evaluations to be programmed to mark as unreliable any value with a high standard deviation. I don't understand why this is not done in all institutions.

We can deal with student evaluation objectively, credibility and reliability through the Authentic analysis of the performance of the student through the tools of the collection and evaluation of the student's work according to specific Rubric and documented examples of such as many types of portfolio:

• portfolio
• E-portfolio
• Web-portfolio

Certain are these problems of evaluation.

I agree with the colleague Mohmed, his suggestions are very accurate.

I just want to add the need to take into account the historical performance index of the student, that is, the ranking of their accumulated systematic evaluation.

The evaluation must be systematic, varied, dosed.

The evaluation fulfills educational, instructive and control functions, among others.

The school climate is also essential to conceive a good evaluation.

There are other related aspects in:

Chapter Quality of life and education in the knowledge society

maybe I wasn't clear enough: I am talking about student's evaluation of our teaching, not the other way around.

Dear Claus,

You raise a higly debated and controversial issues: How to deal with students' evaluations of their professors' teaching? Of course, students' evaluations may be a form of constructive feedback, which may lead professors to improve the quality of their teaching. However, this is not always the case. As you certainly know, students' evaluations of their professors' teaching are nowdays a procedure used at many universities all over the world. However, these evaluations, which must be anonymous and follow several parameters such as professors' punctuality, master of their speciality, criativity, originality, social interaction with their students, for example, should be seen cautioulsy. If there are reliable evaluations, there are also biased evaluations. As you mention, there is accumulated evidence that shows that some evaluations are often flawed, for instance, in terms of gender, etnicity, and so forth. For example, It may be the case that students' evaluations change the way professors teach, but not the quality of their teaching. This happens, for example, when professors, say, appeal to a certain entertainment at the cost of a rigorous teaching. From my experience, I know of several cases in which students' negative evaluations are, say, a form of vengeance or retaliation to compensate for their poor grades on their exams. As I see it, professors should prefer rigorous teaching to, say, entertainment teaching, and even clarify from the onset this aspect before their students. Of course, good teaching is not necessarlity inconsistent with, for example, some humor. Classes, however, are a place for effort and rigor, not a place for entertaiment. I believe that it is up to professors to see to what extent students ' evaluations are well grounded and constructive or flawed and destructutive. Thus, professors should be prepared to take into account the former, and pay no attention to the latter. From my experience as a university student, the professors I liked most were those who were authoritative figures, that is, demanding in cognitive terms, but affable in terms of social interaction, not those who were authoritarian, that is, demanding in cognitive terms, but cold in terms of social interaction, or those who were permissive, that is, guided, say, by the slogan laissez faire, laissez passer, laissez aller (let it go). I have the same experience as a university professor, that this, my students always tell me that they want to have authoritative, not authoritarian or permissive professors. In a nutshell, students' evaluations are a kind of a double sword. Such evaluations can be reliable and lead to a better teaching, or flawed and lead to changes in the way of teaching that does not ncessarily mean a better teaching. As I see it, a professor that is afraid of their students' evaluations and change his/her way of teaching just to please their students at the cost of the rigor of his/her teaching hardly fullfils the ultimate goal of a true teacher, to become unnecessary to his/her students in a more or less distant future.

I hope that I have got your interesting post and that this helps.

Best regards,

Orlando

I have worked as a professor in three universities over the last 38 years, and only in one did student's evaluations include standard deviation values, which show the level of variation within a data set. I believe that if this statistical measure is absent, the numbers are almost meaningless.

For example, if a professor obtains an average rating of 5 or 6 on a scale of 1 to 10, a superficial interpretation of the data would be that she/he is a poor or mediocre educator.

But what if the professor is highly qualified, punctual, committed, strict, etc., and half the group (let us say, the serious students, that performed well and attended regularly) rated each category with high grades of 9 or 10, and the other half (the lazy students that didn't do the homework, didn't attend most of the sessions, and are upset about their low grades) gave ratings of 1 or 2.

One the other hand, consider the case of the poorly qualified professor that often arrives late to class, doesn´t prepare his presentations, but awards high scores to all students in an attempt to win them over. The serious students might give him low ratings, the lazy students might give high ratings, and the average would be again somewhere in the middle.

Thus a rating of 5 or 6 could indicate a poor or mediocre teacher in the opinion of all the students (in which case she/he probably is a poor or mediocre teacher); the same rating could indicate an excellent professor who is being punished for his strictness by the lazy students and rewarded by the serious students; or it could indicate an incompetent professor who is being rewarded by the lazy students and punished by the serious students.

Including the standard deviation would show if the group as a whole is in agreement or if opinion is divided. In the latter case, the results should be discarded as unreliable, and other means should be employed to determine what is happening.

It would be a simple matter for the software used to report the results of student's evaluations to be programmed to mark as unreliable any value with a high standard deviation. I don't understand why this is not done in all institutions.

I agree with David Charles Wright-Carr , How to ensure that the student when evaluating the professor does not invoke the pretexts of flimsy due to the strictness of the professor with him in the absence of completion of the tasks required.

It is rightly said that evaluation drives learning; only if, evaluation is unbiased, but question is how can we make evaluation less biased or almost bias free. Being a human, we are always, almost biased. So the big, question, to make evaluation bias free is only possible when we strive hard to make it less subjective and more objective. to make evaluation more or complete objective, we need to develop tools or periodically evaluate the existing tools and with close collaboration of experts, educators, researchers, policy makers and administrators to develop the objective analytical tool with clear, accurate and relevant criteria, descriptors, and numerical variables. But, here is the catch as tool development has made into horrified and complex thing but in a sense it is not. validity and reliability for me were biggest ghosts but when i really understood them through my own personal struggle, they were not so much horrified ghosts, they were little less.Validity is accuracy, the tool that is as accurate as possible will be reliable. because validity and reliability is interrelated and the tool that is accurate and relevant to its purpose will be reliable. Lastly, educators must act like qualitative researcher while they are evaluating students to keep their personal biases ASIDE and justly and fairly assessing and evaluating students with keeping in mind the ethics and prestige of their profession.

Hi, I definitely agree with Professor Wright-Carr as, most of the time, the only people to evaluate a teacher are the laziest ones who always blame him/her instead of themselves. Poor or low level students are always eager to be the class representative and during pedagogical meetings they dare asking on what basis do teachers evaluate them. Worse, they ask teachers to evaluate the answers but not the language, Englsih in this case.

Either by using traditional paper based tests or by using alternative assessment techniques such as self and peer assessment, portfolio, classroom journal and others.

Liqaa

Often times, the student course evaluations are about the popularity of the instructor and easy grades. I actually use a ratio of the evaluation given by student to instructor to the average score the instructors gives to students. This ratio, I call the normalized score that permits me to evaluate the quality of instruction.

I have had to determine the evaluation by students of a lecturer, noting my own view (constructed over time) of the lecturer under review and inescapably I wonder what exactly the students are evaluating. There's no doubt lecturers have different agendas and some teach in order that students might pass exams, same teach in order to encourage understanding, some teach to simply earn money. A student cannot evaluate on the differences, as its difficult enough for us professionals at times.

Firstly, all teaching must be experiential, not just class room. Secondly all evaluation must be based on application. Doctors have to be interns for a couple of years! Sports persons have to play and win games! I did an MS in IIT where the assessment was based on my research. I loved it and my study was also much more meaningful.

Student Evaluation Form: Areas of Review

I – Student Success Factors

These include key responsibilities and basic competencies. Rate each factor based on performance during the period identified above. The factors include key responsibilities specific to this position, and competencies common to the campus operational/technical student standards.

II – Goals from last year or last evaluation period

Rate the progress made on each of the goals established at the beginning of the period. Also include any new goals established during the evaluation period and note any modifications to the original goals.

III – Goals for this coming year or evaluation period

Enter the performance goals for the next period to be evaluated. Individual goals and objectives should align with those of the department and the campus.

IV – Students Development Plan

Enter any actions that will be taken by the student or teacher/administrator to support the goals indicated in Part III above, or specific student success factors in Part I. The plan may include educational growth, subject mastery, or actions to correct performance.

Student Evaluation Form: Rating Scale

Level 5 (E) Exceptional

Performance far exceeded expectations due to exceptionally high quality of work performed in all essential areas of study, resulting in an overall quality of work that was superior; and either 1) included the completion of a major goal or project, or 2) made an exceptional or unique contributions. This rating is achievable by any student though given infrequently.

Level 4 (EE) Exceeds expectations

Performance consistently exceeded expectations in all essential areas of study, and the quality of work overall was excellent. Annual goals were met.

Level 3 (ME) Meets expectations

Performance consistently met expectations in all essential areas of study, at times possibly exceeding expectations, and the quality of work overall was very good. The most critical annual goals were met.

Level 2 (I) Improvement needed

Performance did not consistently meet expectations – performance failed to meet expectations in one or more essential areas of study, and/or one or more of the most critical goals were not met. An educational development plan to improve performance must be outlined in Section 4, including timelines, and monitored to measure progress.

Level 1 (U) Unsatisfactory

Performance was consistently below expectations in most essential areas of study, and/or reasonable progress toward critical goals was not made. Significant improvement is needed in one or more important areas. In Section 4, a plan to correct performance, including timelines, must be outlined and monitored to measure progress.

*The inclusion of goals is typically a consideration in assessing the overall rating with a student evaluation form.

http://www.evaluationforms.org/forms/education/student-evaluation-form/

I believe that student's intrinsic motivation is the most important target of teachers. Student's feedback could be used to reach this goal by correcting the teaching strategies.

Book FIRST QUANTITATIVE MEASUREMENT OF MOTIVATION Study of the Ef...

Interesting question and discussion....following.

This is very controversial issue in Universities where students' Evaluation is used for assessing the faculty's quality of teaching and consequent decisions are made based on it about the faculty. As many colleagues have mentioned , there is a definite bias in it specially from poor graders or those who have no interest in what's going on in the class. The issues emanate from various aspects like the design of the feed back form, for purpose it is used, who provides the feed back and when and how the feed back is taken. However, a perfected system of feed back does reveal a lot about teaching -learning and the faculty itself. It is essential provided its used only for continuous improvement and the feed back given by filtered students is used (students who are regular in class and achieve high grades). It should have both open ended and close ended statements so that a student is made to think to respond.

A well designed evaluation instrument may reveal a lot about the teacher which presents an opportunity to the teacher to work on the suggested areas.

Though, it has systematic flaws but should not not be done away with. It could become a wonderful tool for self improvement by removing those weaknessess.



Respected Claus,

I want to add one more important point to reduce/eliminate bias in students' evaluation is use of Artificial intelligence. I want to share my personal example here, I was disheartened by the worst form of bias I faced during my educational era as a student, and then while I was seeing khan academy videos to correct my deficiencies in basic math, I have to do exercises at the end of videos and the exercises, when I submitted and do good , I receive virtual applause in form of claps, and flying of colorful pieces of papers to celebrate my good work, and when I was not doing so good it encourages me to do good and give me batches and energy points for my stickiness to that particular problem. In my opinion computer based evaluation system and different soft ware to evaluate students are already in practice to less or more extent. I was very happy with the response of virtual evaluation of khan academy videos as it has nothing to do who I was? what color of skin I have, and what religion/culture/gender/ I posses?it has nothing to do with my appearance, the clothes I have worn, it has nothing to do with my age. Virtual evaluation mend my self esteem; I think scholars are not allowed to talk like this, It is against scientific rules but to convey my point accurately and with relevance(now it sounds more scientific), I have shared this example. Hope my answer will help with so many other helpful answers, Regards!

In my view, student evaluation in a particular format may be carried out twice during the term. First evaluation during mid term and second before end term. Another can be student evaluation in the beginning of the term about their knowledge and second end term to know the gains and learnings by students. The increased score at end term vis a vis beginning of term, will indicate learning due to teacher‘ s sessions and efforts. Another factor worth considering may be that evaluation feedback of top 80% may be considered for evaluation.

What we can consider is the student's records such as his/her attendance, lateness of submissions (if any). Performance in similar kind of subject in the then current year or previous one. And some other similar data. These records are unbiased data. And all this needs to be analysed along with the rating that students give to professor. Thus we can have an interpreted result in the end that will provide a wider range of credibility of the individual professor.

Assessment has always been used as a method for defining cognitive learning / gain for academics. A central question is which instrument should be used in each situation or moment. This reflection is important because it seems relatively easy to elaborate a proof when in the classroom we approach certain contents. However, the evaluation of practical activities presents greater difficulties and certainly more subjectivity because we are faced with a greater difficulty regarding the instrument to be used. Could it be practiced at the end of the period? Would it be possible to estimate the practical gain by comparing the knowledge of the first and the last day of practice?

There is a reason for this bias.

I have a case in mind, the prof is trying to remove all females from the class through rude behaviour, avoiding replying to questions and low marks. Those student evaluations will not be good! Do you expect them to be better?

You can use the student feedback constructively to improve your teaching, but to bring balance to my course evaluations, I respond to the report, copying my Director and Dean in clarifying very negative statements with evidence collected during the course. These would include student e-mails, course handouts, and assignments. Once both sides of the issues are given, your superiors can then discuss them if they have any concerns. But, from my experience, they rarely ever raise the latter. I hope this helps.

Best regards,

Debra

Dear Claus,

Real controversial issues: students' evaluations may be a form of constructive feedback. Student feedback is a rich and valuable source of information for both formative and summative purposes. For this reason, student feedback and evaluation are key components of the University's Quality Enhancement Framework, as well as providing summative evidence for staff promotion, probation and awards, and for internal and external quality assurance reporting requirements. Generally, find that formative evaluation is more helpful than end-of-semester summative evaluation. Give students several opportunities over the semester to provide feedback, and demonstrate that you are making adjustments based on the information you are receiving. You aren't really a reflective teacher if you are not using both formal and informal assessment of your teaching to adjust what you are doing in the classroom.

Know Before You Go

1. You Will Get Mixed Feedback

2. Evaluations Mirror Social Inequity

3. Use The Buddy System

4. Channel Michelle Obama.

5. Get Some Distance

It is important to remember that student feedback is not the only form of evidence which you can use to evaluate your own courses. Other evidence includes:

1. A review of what students have learned (as evidenced in exam performances, for example).

2. Your own experiences in teaching the course.

3. Discussion with colleagues or a Teaching Advisor

4. Feedback from past students of the course.

The only response that I can make now regarding the use of student evaluations is to ignore them. There are so much data now that grade leniency, likability, gender and humour work to inflate evaluations that high scores are not to be believed and low scores may or may not reflect poor teaching. Try to find a way to influence students so that they keep returning to class and write notes. That behaviour may reflect effectiveness.

In a university that I was able to work with, students with a failure in certain teacher's class are not included in the evaluation for that concern teacher. The evaluation was done after the end semester when they have taken all their grades or before enrolling the succeeding semester. All evaluations are online but can be done only within the university designated computer lab.

I agree with John Innes

Dear colleagues, what about teachers' self-evaluation after each semester, for each module taught, and after each examination? Wouldnt it be a good way to assess one's progress, gaps and else?