Dear respected Colleague

Achieving good evaluation survey response rates may be difficult and can be driven by many influences. Numerous studies have evaluated what factors impact student response rates on course and faculty evaluations . The best approach to evaluation is participatory, learning-oriented, and is timely and relevant to the work. This approach extends to those the foundation wishes to serve, whose voices, needs, and perspectives inform the work.

Another method to evaluate teaching is to have the Dean, Associate Dean, or Department Chair observe a course. At my university, the Associate Dean has to observe every faculty member at least once per year. He sits in one once of my class meetings and records my performance. We have a form that the Associate Dean uses to evaluate each instructor.

unfortunately this approach doesn't address the quality of instruction throughout the semester. If the instructor is popular because he/she isn't challenging student, then observing him/her will only reinforce the obvious.

Hello,

You are absolutely right about the current state of affairs regarding the evaluation of instruction quality. Teacher's evaluation through observation has long been used in many institutions. However, recent debates in the philosophy of education have pointed to the centrality of teachers' moral values and ethical code of conduct. The Kantian philosophy defines moral values in terms of the duties individuals need to perform in all professions. In the case of teachers , the accountability toward learners and teachers' willingness in meeting such criteria as social praxis and equality have a great bearing on the quality of instruction. Therefore, a comprehensive teacher professional development program whereby philosophy of education and axiological aspects of teaching are highlighted is a prerequisite to the quality of instruction.

Best regards,

R. Biria

Dear respected Colleague

Achieving good evaluation survey response rates may be difficult and can be driven by many influences. Numerous studies have evaluated what factors impact student response rates on course and faculty evaluations . The best approach to evaluation is participatory, learning-oriented, and is timely and relevant to the work. This approach extends to those the foundation wishes to serve, whose voices, needs, and perspectives inform the work.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I agree with your suggestion but the reality in which we work requires us to assess performance in terms of metrics! Do you have suggestions for metrics?

Evaluation done by students is still the best method provided that the students are properly oriented, guided and randomly selected.

You can not have random students in a classroom after a semester in which the instructor was an easy going less demanding no homework than his/her colleagues. Some are interested in popularity and getting high scores on student course evaluations to meet tenure guidelines espoused by most universities. Students can be misled as to what is in their best future interests. Tough instructors that inspire students to greater heights aren’t typically the ones with the highest student course evaluations. I have accummulated years of records to demonstrate this unfortunate trend.

My experience is that there should be a wide variety of inputs for a complete evaluation. Student evaluations are important. Class observation by the Department Chair or Dean is important. The distribution of grades is important. Class observation by colleagues is important. Written feedback by students at mid-semester is also important. There is no 'magic bullet'. There is no one measure that captures all performance measures. The best performance evaluation is a combination of different sources.

Thank you Paul and I agree with your statement regarding a magic bullet.

Some student evaluation forms have not modified to accommodate the shift from F2F to blended learning environments, so they are not adequate to evaluate the rationale for the blend used (soft, medium, or strong) and the quality of the online component. What I think is important is for the instructor to respond to the comments and ratings given by the student to bring balance to the overall evaluation. Many times I have found that students' ratings and comments do not add up, especially for attendance. Students would tick that they attended the majority of the classes, but the register would show that they attended 50% or less.

Best regards,

Debra

Thank you Debra for your insights. It is helpful. Amir

Hi dear,

I agree with the most contributors, especially Dr. Debra.

With my best regards!

Adel

Evaluations should be conducted in multiple ways. For example, a teacher who instructs with rigor and adheres to deadlines may not receive a favorable comment from students. A short student survey, classroom observation by a chair or dean, and an instructor self evaluation would be a more equitable combination, totaling one score for all three, which would result in continuous improvement for the instructor instead of punitive actions. I currently supervise adjuncts, and have found that the more support I give them at the beginning of the semester, make myself available for duration of the semester with checking in to see if they need anything or working with them if problems arise, really helps this process.

In my humble experience, Many times you do not have to change instruments, but change the contexts.

the student responds according to the emotional load and does not respond many times to the suggested indicators.

on one occasion, evaluate with the same instrument one semester later. there was a change in the vision, since, having taken later courses, they saw with objectivity the impact of what was learned and not learned.

the other important thing is that, who evaluates, must have attended at least 70% of the classes.

why 70% and 75% or 65%? where do you get the number?

At my university, the policy is that any student who misses 25% of class meetings receives an F and cannot complete an evaluation form at the end of the semester. So, all students who attend 75% or more of classes completes an evaluation.

Thank you Paul.

As @Paul says, in various universities, is defined as an "institutional policy", undergraduate, in Chile is defined by the ministry of education.

But it is easy to reach this number, and it depends on each context,

find the model that predicts the Academic Achievement reached based on% attendance. The data must be all students of the university, you can add variable level.

Do not include students who have dropped out or withdrawn or who never answered the assessments

Carlos, this is really an interesting approach. Amir

The portfolio is an instrument that allows to have different evidences of the teaching performance that complements the look of the students. In my work we did a pilot that was highly valued by teachers that included different milestones in the teaching of a course:

Milestone 1: Planning of teaching: Consisted in the development of the syllabus in coherence with the learning objectives expected for the course, the class-to-class program with the activities and readings. A justification of the decisions taken in this planning was included.

Milestone 2: Evaluative tasks: In this section, the teacher presented each evaluation task carried out, the revision rubric and evidences of a good job and one deficient made by students. Included in this section was the justification for the decisions made to improve the learning of both students and what kind of feedback had been given.

Milestone 3: Implementation of the planning: This section included an explanation of the activities that had worked well and the problems that the teacher had during the course, in this way, there is a correlation of a situation that may appear in the evaluations made by the students. The aspects that need improvement are also included here.

This portfolio is made by the teacher for each course he or she dictates, considering a cycle of 2-3 years, that is, it is carried out every 3 times the course is implemented. It should be with precise guide questions that guide the teacher's reflection with an approachable extension.

This must be installed in the university with the support of some area of ​​teacher development, considering a model that includes different sources of information: Professor, students, approval rate, among others.

Learning outcomes, quality and impact on the labor market

How would you measure quality and impact on labor market?

Carla,

I like your idea........how do you find the time to implement such a task?

Thanks Carla.

Thank you Carla! The documentation of teaching efforts, although not always identical to teaching practice, indicates effort and thought going into someone's teaching. This documentation (your portfolio for example) therefore provides great evidence of effective teaching.

The drawbacks of assessing instructors by students are more than the benefits. You cannot trust the whole lot of students to be scientific enough & honest in evaluating their teachers fairly & squarely. Many students like the instructor who is easy going, generous in giving high marks, and lenient in classes.

A better evaluation of teachers, by the students, will be after they graduate & become more mature and less seekers of favors. You do not need to ask them all; you just give a short questionnaire to the top, say 5 students who joined a particular course.

Another partial indicator is assessing the graduated students in their places of work or their postgraduate studies. If the students are fine, then their teachers would also have been fine.

The quality of instruction at a certain institution will be better assessed by an external " neutral" committee of experts. This board may visit a university & stay for ,say one week and has to be allowed free movement & activity within the campus. Its final report will be scientifically much more stronger than the "biased" reports that are prepared by internal teams which usually praise the administration & demand more effort from the "unaffiliated" lecturers.

But which instructor will receive credit for the success stories discovered through place of employment. Also, what should you do, wait before you assess faculty performance?

Shar, the idea is that it is a task of low workload for the teacher. Each section is focused on guiding questions that guide the response and that have a maximum length of between 1 and 3 pages. In addition, a teacher is expected to make important changes to his course every 3 times he or she dictates it, so it is not a task that must be done every semester.

The professors who participated in the experience pointed out that it helped them a lot to become aware of activities that they did as a "habit" and that by justifying their decisions they saw that these actions, materials or bibliography did not contribute to the achievement of the learning objectives of the course. They described it as a task that favored their professional development and improved their teaching with a minimum investment of time for the benefits obtained.

Agree with Carla.

Thanks for sharing, Carla!

Thanks Shar!