Student feedback is a valid and important way of hearing the student voice and it shouldn't be undervalued. But nor should it be over-valued and used as a tool to bash staff. Gwen, you speak about a correlation between being an easy grader and getting good feedback but there is little research data to support this assertion and Patrick (2011) found that the correlation between grades and student evaluations is zero. Further, Kotze and Du Plessis (2003) found that student satisfaction is a measure of teaching effectiveness and Richardson, Slater and Wilson (2007) found that such satisfaction is increased in line with the support that lecturers offer and students’ perceptions of apparent teaching skills. Whilst some may question the subjective nature of such feedback, if we hope to assess the learning situation it only seems right to hear the learners’ perspective. It is also worth noting that ‘when students learn more, both grades and their opinion of the course/teacher will be higher’ (Patrick, 2011: 248). And, not surprisingly, Richardson, Slater and Wilson (2007) found that teaching skills and teacher support showed the highest correlation with overall satisfaction. The core of the debate in the field of student evaluation has now accepted the validity of SIRs and moved on to how lecturer's might use such feedback.

Kotze, T.G. & Du Plessis, P.J. (2003). Students as co producers of education: A proposed model of students’ socialization and participation at tertiary institutions. Quality Assurance in Education 27(1), 27-52.

Patrick, C.L. (2011) Student evaluations of teaching: effects of the Big Five personality traits, grades and the validity hypothesis. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 36, no. 2: 239-249.

Richardson, J., J. Slater, and J. Wilson. (2007). The national student survey: development, findings and implications. Studies in Higher Education 32, no. 5: 557-580.

SIRs should not be the main factor in getting advancement. There is much more to lecturing than the student sees: How much research and Research has gone into the course? How fresh is it? How much knowledge does the lecturer know about the profession? How strict is the lecturer about starting promptly? How much is ICT used?

However, breaking SIRs into two parts: Lecturer and course does help.

"Easiest universities" are also caused by poor admin, loopholes, cheating, plagiarism, etc. not just by grade inflation.

SIRs can be useful if they are revised each year, are specific, and honestly answered. For example, you need software to exclude student answers that are obviously simplistic (ABCDEABCDE... or AAAAAAAAAA...)

Then SIRs must be used only for the purposes for which they are fit, and not misused or misapplied.

You are on the right track.

Student feedback is a valid and important way of hearing the student voice and it shouldn't be undervalued. But nor should it be over-valued and used as a tool to bash staff. Gwen, you speak about a correlation between being an easy grader and getting good feedback but there is little research data to support this assertion and Patrick (2011) found that the correlation between grades and student evaluations is zero. Further, Kotze and Du Plessis (2003) found that student satisfaction is a measure of teaching effectiveness and Richardson, Slater and Wilson (2007) found that such satisfaction is increased in line with the support that lecturers offer and students’ perceptions of apparent teaching skills. Whilst some may question the subjective nature of such feedback, if we hope to assess the learning situation it only seems right to hear the learners’ perspective. It is also worth noting that ‘when students learn more, both grades and their opinion of the course/teacher will be higher’ (Patrick, 2011: 248). And, not surprisingly, Richardson, Slater and Wilson (2007) found that teaching skills and teacher support showed the highest correlation with overall satisfaction. The core of the debate in the field of student evaluation has now accepted the validity of SIRs and moved on to how lecturer's might use such feedback.

Kotze, T.G. & Du Plessis, P.J. (2003). Students as co producers of education: A proposed model of students’ socialization and participation at tertiary institutions. Quality Assurance in Education 27(1), 27-52.

Patrick, C.L. (2011) Student evaluations of teaching: effects of the Big Five personality traits, grades and the validity hypothesis. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 36, no. 2: 239-249.

Richardson, J., J. Slater, and J. Wilson. (2007). The national student survey: development, findings and implications. Studies in Higher Education 32, no. 5: 557-580.

@Gwendolyn: There you are! Your initial micro reading list is above, courtesy Erik. Now you can follow the links to the Scholars who are citing Patrick!

The value of SIRs can generally be increased and the downsides minimized if the data is normed/placed within a comparison set. This can be as simple as providing institutional, departmental, and course averages as a comparison for an instructor's ratings. It can be done in a fairly robust way, one example of which comes from the IDEA form, which is used by hundreds of colleges and universities. The IDEA form provides a report with both the raw data and then percentile ratings that are adjusted for averages for the type of class, field of study, and a variety of student self reports.

If the data from SIRs is used in a sensible way, then it provides limited information that is useful for both an instructor and administration.

Dear All,

There was a discussion on Linkedlin almost a year ago on a similar subject: on the sense and raisons of SIRs. I would like to cite some of them:

Mel Anderson • Sadly, many end-of-term student evaluations are mostly customer satisfaction surveys aimed at getting ideas for enhancing enrollments and tuition revenue.

Students are NOT customers, even if the school finance office sees them that way. When students walk into my classroom, they are purely students with duties and responsibilities for performance that are graded by me.

When a student doesn't perform well, he earns a lower grade. But he might consider himself a customer and seek recourse or even revenge against the teacher who graded him fairly but lower. The wrong person is evaluating the teacher; the right person is the department chairman who meets his responsibilities by evaluating the teacher's work and providing valid feedback to the teacher.

Leslie Bowman • I have an anonymous survey several times during a course asking for suggestions for new activities or changes in current practices. I don't ask what they like or don't like. I ask for suggestions. As for official course evaluations, I agree that it's nothing more than a customer satisfaction questionnaire. Students who make good grades rarely complete the evaluations. Students who made bad grades can't wait to unload on those end-of-course evaluations. Teachers who have high expectations and grade accordingly generally have lower scores on evaluations than faculty who grade without extensive and comprehensive assessments.

Maureen Hawkins • To further follow up on what Mel said, I find that many student evaluations ask questions the students are not qualified to answer (e.g., "Does you professor know the subject matter well?") or which are matters of personal preference (e.g., "Do your professor's voice and mannerisms enhance his or her delivery of the material?"--to that one, I once had a suggestion that I change my hairstyle!). If there are questions like that on your standard evaluation, you should bring it up with your fellow faculty members, put together your reasons for objecting to them, and bring the issue up with your administration. In my own view, there are really only a few really pertinent questions students are qualified to answer: e.g., "Does your professor seem to care about the subject?" "Does your professor seem to care about teaching?" "Does your professor seem to care about students?" I don't think these are issues on which you can fool the students. However, I've not yet been able to persuade my administration to use them.

Mel Anderson • I remember that about ten years ago, I taught a graduate project management course at a local private college. I thought I did it well, and so did all of the 25 students in the class--except one. That student spent the entire term objecting to everything I taught and said. And she was no doubt the one who graded me at total zeros on the customer satisfaction (student eval) survey.

I always wondered what it was that she thought the class should present, or what I should have said at some moment, or what perhaps I should NOT have said. This event taught me that you can't win them all, and that you'll never know what hit you when it happens. I know a few cute sayings that might fit:

Never get into a squirting contest with a skunk.

Never wrestle a pig; you both get dirty and the pig likes it.

The second mouse gets the cheese.

A ship is safe in the harbor--but that's not what ships are for.

How Come Every Time I Get Stabbed in the Back, My Fingerprints Are on the Knife?

(Jerry B. Harvey--The Abilene Paradox)

I agree with all of these experiences and comments. In anonymous SIRs many students shamlessly lie. I remember about one such a SIR when the majority of students have not even attended the course and their opinion correlated accurately the grade they got for their “performance”. Students who were not able to write a reasonable phrase and did not attended classes underestimated the unknown course and the teacher’s work.

Students Instructional Reports have been used in many countries all over the world. Its real purpose was mentioned earlier, many statistical analysis came out of, they were insignificant, as many of contributor noticed. Why? Obviously, the problem is honesty of students , severity of students, relation professor-student...,... etc. So the last part of @Gwendolyn's question explanation: "...,... if I am on the right track in rationalizing that these instructional surveys say more about the students than they say about the quality of teaching that is going on?" really confirm my position on SIR!

Thank you all for these excellent and insightful responses. They are extremely helpful in calming me down as "the administrators" take over our university with their endless "learning outcomes assessments" (accomplished by utilizing end-of-the-semester boilerplate questions having nothing to do with the content actually taught in our courses) and tallying of SIRs in connection with selecting the recipient of "The Teacher of the Year" award. Needless to say, since customer satisfaction is the goal, boilerplate questions are "dumbed down" each year as a result of the poor results on the learning outcomes assessments. I am just waiting for one of the boilerplate questions to become, "What day of the week is this?"

Gwen