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So here is a fun fact about professor performance. When I was a grad student, various calculus classes had a shared final. We had some professors with great eva

So here is a fun fact about professor performance. When I was a grad student, various calculus classes had a shared final. We had some professors with great evaluations who devoted their life to teaching. We had some Germans and Chinese who students perceived to barely speak English [1] and hated. Student evals were fairly predictable - hard exams would reduce scores, jokes and sympathy would increase them. Everyone's students followed the exact same normal curve. I've been told that the only way one can make an observable difference in group final scores is to schedule a class at the same time as sports practice or remedial education. You need better students, not a better teacher. [1] I've noticed that either students are unable/unwilling to listen to a foreign accent, or perhaps I am unable to notice them. Recently a friend of mine said my secretary had a heavy accent - I barely notice it.

dsr_ 12y ago
If that was a true over an adequately large poulation of students, it would indicate that the professors are all equally bad at teaching.
- revelation 12y ago
  Or they are all equally good, or they all have exactly the same wrinkle on their nose, as the very point of this article is that student evaluations don't measure what we think they do.
ebiester 12y ago
First, an 18 year old has less experience deciphering a thick accent than someone with years of experience in IT. I don't blink at accents that would have baffled me a decade ago. Second, if there is cognitive load devoted to understanding the words, that is energy not devoted to understanding the concepts. Friends in those classes in college spent extra time outside of class with tutors and study groups than those with good teachers because they knew the tests didn't change. Third, the lack of variance means the teachers don't make a difference in general. Perhaps there is a greater question to ask there.
rtpg 12y ago
concerning accents, I've had a lot of experience "dealing with"[1] people who speak English with a foreign accent, so I thought I reached a point where I could pretty much decipher anything automatically. a year or so ago I went to a research conference, with a lot of people from Europe presenting. Generally, everyone there had a good handle on the language (as you might when presenting a bunch of stuff in English all the time), but about halfway through an American came on stage to present her work. The instant she started talking I realised that listening to her was so much easier than listening to anyone else talk. I "confirmed" this from other talks by americans compared to european talks. Not the most scientific thing but generally I think there is extra work happening in the brain when listening to a foreigner talk, and that it can be the point that makes something hard to deal with. [1] I mean this with as little animosity as possible. Having the courage to learn a foreign language and then present in it is extremely commendable.
cordite 12y ago
When evaluating universities for their CS programs before choosing one, accent was a factor in my choosing. One university seemed to only hire grad students to teach since they did not want to pay competitively for professors from the field. Theses foreign grad students did not have a love for teaching (that I could observe). The university I finally chose did pay competitively to the field, most loved teaching and their research. Yes there were still a few with an accent which pronounced my name wrong, but they've had at least some speech therapy on the side to get better. I think that foreign professors that teach should take part in a speech therapy program for the benefit of the university students. It truly is a cognitive load, and I already have difficulty in hearing and comprehending words as it is without any particular accent.
j2kun 12y ago
I TAed for a group of students who yelled and complained on the first day that they couldn't understand a word their professor was saying. She had the mildest of eastern European accents, and my students were all just being babies. Five weeks into the course I asked them, "Is the accent thing still a problem?" and they all agreed, "Oh, no not at all we got used to it." I will never listen to a student who complains about an accent ever again.
shanusmagnus 12y ago
I understand the spirit of your comment, and the statistical difficulties in doing ratings in a meaningful way as described in TFA, but it is absolute truth that there are teachers who are absolutely _wretched_ and when I was an undergrad it drove many of us nuts to have no way to identify them. The problem might have been especially severe when I was an undergrad, since I went to one of the most populous schools in the US, before the proliferation of social medial and the like made a lot of this information gathering easier. But it was a real problem. The fact that in the case you mention all the students had the same normal curve (by which I assume you mean they had the same means and also the same shape) is interesting, but there's more to being a good or bad teacher than the numeric outcome of the class, which ought to be a familiar argument by this time. Another problem that you mention, and that was also very real, was that some of the teachers literally could not be understood. I use 'literally' literally -- I took an automata theory class from a guy that seemed to have been speaking his own native tongue and not English. That class was an absolute delight, as you might imagine. Most of my teachers had strong accents, and I could deal with it, but some were incomprehensible and had no business teaching in am American university. Acting like these are problems that don't exist, and that complaints are just small-mindedness or excuse-making, is just as bad as going the other way and throwing a fit when you have to 'endure' an unfamiliar accent. Everything's a matter of degree.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  ...there are teachers who are absolutely _wretched_... Are there? We thought the same thing about our "worst" professors/TAs. Yet students ability to differentiate/integrate seemed unaffected. Now this suggests one of two things. First, that there really are no "worst" professors/TAs. Second, that students have the ability to replace a $3-4,000 class with reading a $50-150 book (+ Khan academy, etc). In the former case it suggests teacher quality don't matter much. In the latter case it suggests teachers are completely unnecessary and our usage of them should be reduced. This experiment at MIT is promising: http://phys.org/news/2014-09-online-classes.html http://phys.org/news/2014-09-online-classes.html ...there's more to being a good or bad teacher than the numeric outcome of the class, which ought to be a familiar argument by this time. This is a familiar platitude. I've never seen an actual argument that didn't appeal to invisible dragons. http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm

dsr_ 12y ago

If that was a true over an adequately large poulation of students, it would indicate that the professors are all equally bad at teaching.

revelation 12y ago
Or they are all equally good, or they all have exactly the same wrinkle on their nose, as the very point of this article is that student evaluations don't measure what we think they do.

ebiester 12y ago

First, an 18 year old has less experience deciphering a thick accent than someone with years of experience in IT. I don't blink at accents that would have baffled me a decade ago. Second, if there is cognitive load devoted to understanding the words, that is energy not devoted to understanding the concepts. Friends in those classes in college spent extra time outside of class with tutors and study groups than those with good teachers because they knew the tests didn't change. Third, the lack of variance means the teachers don't make a difference in general. Perhaps there is a greater question to ask there.

rtpg 12y ago

concerning accents, I've had a lot of experience "dealing with"[1] people who speak English with a foreign accent, so I thought I reached a point where I could pretty much decipher anything automatically. a year or so ago I went to a research conference, with a lot of people from Europe presenting. Generally, everyone there had a good handle on the language (as you might when presenting a bunch of stuff in English all the time), but about halfway through an American came on stage to present her work. The instant she started talking I realised that listening to her was so much easier than listening to anyone else talk. I "confirmed" this from other talks by americans compared to european talks. Not the most scientific thing but generally I think there is extra work happening in the brain when listening to a foreigner talk, and that it can be the point that makes something hard to deal with. [1] I mean this with as little animosity as possible. Having the courage to learn a foreign language and then present in it is extremely commendable.

cordite 12y ago

When evaluating universities for their CS programs before choosing one, accent was a factor in my choosing. One university seemed to only hire grad students to teach since they did not want to pay competitively for professors from the field. Theses foreign grad students did not have a love for teaching (that I could observe). The university I finally chose did pay competitively to the field, most loved teaching and their research. Yes there were still a few with an accent which pronounced my name wrong, but they've had at least some speech therapy on the side to get better. I think that foreign professors that teach should take part in a speech therapy program for the benefit of the university students. It truly is a cognitive load, and I already have difficulty in hearing and comprehending words as it is without any particular accent.

j2kun 12y ago

I TAed for a group of students who yelled and complained on the first day that they couldn't understand a word their professor was saying. She had the mildest of eastern European accents, and my students were all just being babies. Five weeks into the course I asked them, "Is the accent thing still a problem?" and they all agreed, "Oh, no not at all we got used to it." I will never listen to a student who complains about an accent ever again.

shanusmagnus 12y ago

I understand the spirit of your comment, and the statistical difficulties in doing ratings in a meaningful way as described in TFA, but it is absolute truth that there are teachers who are absolutely _wretched_ and when I was an undergrad it drove many of us nuts to have no way to identify them. The problem might have been especially severe when I was an undergrad, since I went to one of the most populous schools in the US, before the proliferation of social medial and the like made a lot of this information gathering easier. But it was a real problem. The fact that in the case you mention all the students had the same normal curve (by which I assume you mean they had the same means and also the same shape) is interesting, but there's more to being a good or bad teacher than the numeric outcome of the class, which ought to be a familiar argument by this time. Another problem that you mention, and that was also very real, was that some of the teachers literally could not be understood. I use 'literally' literally -- I took an automata theory class from a guy that seemed to have been speaking his own native tongue and not English. That class was an absolute delight, as you might imagine. Most of my teachers had strong accents, and I could deal with it, but some were incomprehensible and had no business teaching in am American university. Acting like these are problems that don't exist, and that complaints are just small-mindedness or excuse-making, is just as bad as going the other way and throwing a fit when you have to 'endure' an unfamiliar accent. Everything's a matter of degree.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
...there are teachers who are absolutely _wretched_... Are there? We thought the same thing about our "worst" professors/TAs. Yet students ability to differentiate/integrate seemed unaffected. Now this suggests one of two things. First, that there really are no "worst" professors/TAs. Second, that students have the ability to replace a $3-4,000 class with reading a $50-150 book (+ Khan academy, etc). In the former case it suggests teacher quality don't matter much. In the latter case it suggests teachers are completely unnecessary and our usage of them should be reduced. This experiment at MIT is promising: http://phys.org/news/2014-09-online-classes.html http://phys.org/news/2014-09-online-classes.html ...there's more to being a good or bad teacher than the numeric outcome of the class, which ought to be a familiar argument by this time. This is a familiar platitude. I've never seen an actual argument that didn't appeal to invisible dragons. http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm