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This strikes me as a very whiny article, not worthy of publishing in the Chronicle. A lifetime of hurt feelings and resentments bubbling up into a rant full of

This strikes me as a very whiny article, not worthy of publishing in the Chronicle. A lifetime of hurt feelings and resentments bubbling up into a rant full of straw men and frankly irresponsible misinformation about the role student evaluations play in instructor assessment. It’s too bad, too, because there certainly are criticisms to be made, and this article hints at some of them. But a well designed evaluation instrument along with critical interpretation of the results and comments can be an invaluable tool for instructors who want to improve their teaching. But unfortunately this article also spreads untruths about the weight given to student evaluations, and dismisses common-sense security protocols like having a student deliver the results instead of the instructor (not perfect of course, but the student has much less incentive to tamper) as demeaning rather than a sensible precaution. If the author had presented any evidence whatsoever to support her claims linking student evals to grade inflation (possibly related, and I’m sure studies have been done, but evals are very far from the only obvious contributing factor), or even made a passing attempt to explain what percentage of weight is given to raw eval scores for actual tenure considerations (very little in the broad scheme of things), and cut the junk out about how universities seeing students as customers is a new thing (it’s not new at all as any skim of the history of universities as an institution will make clear, but someone at a US state university should realize that it’s skyrocketing tuition rates, and not whiny students, that give students a bigger sense of entitlement) the article would have been much better.

michaelmior 8y ago
While I think it's true that the article overemphasized the weight placed on student evaluations somewhat, I think this does get to the real problem. There's nothing wrong with students evaluating instructors. The problem comes when this is the only method used to evaluate teaching effectiveness. I'm a newly appointed professor, but I've heard many stories from colleagues in the past about students thanking them for being demanding in their course as what they learned was helpful in the future. Demanding classes tend to have negative impact on student evaluations, but that's obviously not capturing the whole picture.
wahern 8y ago
How does a sense of entitlement result in grade inflation? Well, the obvious way is if you pervasively require students evaluations, students systematically evaluate professors based on the grades they received, and these evaluations are used to make staffing and compensation decisions by the administration, incentivizing strategic grading behavior by professors. Solution: stop the evaluations. Even most entitled students won't make unsolicited complaints. And of the ones who do? As long as student complaints aren't used to rank every professor relative to each other, but rather only to weed out the most egregious instructors, there's significantly less pressure for grade inflation. It's when you provide the administration a regular, systematized, "objective" stream of data points that the temptation to assess professors this way becomes irresistible for the administration.
- syrrim 8y ago
  The average mark is generally fixed at around 75%. So a professor that systematically inflates grades will be called out.
  - BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
    > The average mark is generally fixed at around 75% You just made that up. > So a professor that systematically inflates grades will be called out. Yyyyyyyeaaaahh...where? From experience, the average mark given to Harvard humanities undergraduates is an A regardless of quality. Students literally cry in the middle of class if they get an A- because they can't string together a coherent argument from evidence.
    - syrrim 8y ago
      My uncle is a professor. This is what he said is required of him. Perhaps universities like harvard have lower standards. In any case, consider that this system is in fact a solution to the proposed problem.
      - BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
> a well designed evaluation instrument along with critical interpretation of the results and comments can be an invaluable tool for instructors who want to improve their teaching. An instructor who actually wants to improve their teaching solicits and engages with feedback from the very first day of the term and doesn't wait until end of term evaluations roll in. Why? Because end of term evaluations, by definition, cannot help the students who wrote them.
- newen 8y ago
  That's not easy at all. Instructors design their course typically before the first class starts. Trying to incorporate suggestions from students -- students who have no experience teaching -- is just going to lead to disaster.
  - BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
    Feedback isn't for suggestions, it's for understanding problems that your students are having. If you aren't normalizing the process of students telling you when they are struggling, then they either won't tell you when they're struggling at all or you'll only find out too late. It could be pedagogical stuff like they don't understand your explanations, or it could be emotional things like they're having panic attacks and don't know what to do, or it could be simple technical details like what fonts you use on your slides. And if you know right away then you can do something right away and actually help someone.
- afarrell 8y ago
  nitpick: An instructor may genuinely want to improve their teaching but may only think to solicit feedback until the end of term or may default to end-of-term evals because they do not have a go-to system for soliciting feedback iteratively. (Unless you define "want" as "what the behavior of this system would lead to" and thereby pretend that no human act is an error)
  - BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
    You're right that they may want to do something without knowing where to start. I amend my "will do" into "should do" with the caveat that perhaps a person who doesn't know this shouldn't be teaching yet.
foobiekr 8y ago
I have kept in touch with many of my professors over 20 Y. On a whim I checked out their online reviews not too long ago and mostly agreed. In particular, a very close friend of mine is a tenured lecturer. He is a really good guy, but good lord is he a terrible instructor. The student reviews for him agree.

michaelmior 8y ago

While I think it's true that the article overemphasized the weight placed on student evaluations somewhat, I think this does get to the real problem. There's nothing wrong with students evaluating instructors. The problem comes when this is the only method used to evaluate teaching effectiveness. I'm a newly appointed professor, but I've heard many stories from colleagues in the past about students thanking them for being demanding in their course as what they learned was helpful in the future. Demanding classes tend to have negative impact on student evaluations, but that's obviously not capturing the whole picture.

wahern 8y ago

How does a sense of entitlement result in grade inflation? Well, the obvious way is if you pervasively require students evaluations, students systematically evaluate professors based on the grades they received, and these evaluations are used to make staffing and compensation decisions by the administration, incentivizing strategic grading behavior by professors. Solution: stop the evaluations. Even most entitled students won't make unsolicited complaints. And of the ones who do? As long as student complaints aren't used to rank every professor relative to each other, but rather only to weed out the most egregious instructors, there's significantly less pressure for grade inflation. It's when you provide the administration a regular, systematized, "objective" stream of data points that the temptation to assess professors this way becomes irresistible for the administration.

syrrim 8y ago
The average mark is generally fixed at around 75%. So a professor that systematically inflates grades will be called out.
- BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
  > The average mark is generally fixed at around 75% You just made that up. > So a professor that systematically inflates grades will be called out. Yyyyyyyeaaaahh...where? From experience, the average mark given to Harvard humanities undergraduates is an A regardless of quality. Students literally cry in the middle of class if they get an A- because they can't string together a coherent argument from evidence.
  - syrrim 8y ago
    My uncle is a professor. This is what he said is required of him. Perhaps universities like harvard have lower standards. In any case, consider that this system is in fact a solution to the proposed problem.
    - BugsJustFindMe 8y ago

BugsJustFindMe 8y ago

> a well designed evaluation instrument along with critical interpretation of the results and comments can be an invaluable tool for instructors who want to improve their teaching. An instructor who actually wants to improve their teaching solicits and engages with feedback from the very first day of the term and doesn't wait until end of term evaluations roll in. Why? Because end of term evaluations, by definition, cannot help the students who wrote them.

newen 8y ago
That's not easy at all. Instructors design their course typically before the first class starts. Trying to incorporate suggestions from students -- students who have no experience teaching -- is just going to lead to disaster.
- BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
  Feedback isn't for suggestions, it's for understanding problems that your students are having. If you aren't normalizing the process of students telling you when they are struggling, then they either won't tell you when they're struggling at all or you'll only find out too late. It could be pedagogical stuff like they don't understand your explanations, or it could be emotional things like they're having panic attacks and don't know what to do, or it could be simple technical details like what fonts you use on your slides. And if you know right away then you can do something right away and actually help someone.
afarrell 8y ago
nitpick: An instructor may genuinely want to improve their teaching but may only think to solicit feedback until the end of term or may default to end-of-term evals because they do not have a go-to system for soliciting feedback iteratively. (Unless you define "want" as "what the behavior of this system would lead to" and thereby pretend that no human act is an error)
- BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
  You're right that they may want to do something without knowing where to start. I amend my "will do" into "should do" with the caveat that perhaps a person who doesn't know this shouldn't be teaching yet.

foobiekr 8y ago

I have kept in touch with many of my professors over 20 Y. On a whim I checked out their online reviews not too long ago and mostly agreed. In particular, a very close friend of mine is a tenured lecturer. He is a really good guy, but good lord is he a terrible instructor. The student reviews for him agree.