Initial Publication Date: April 13, 2015

Evaluating Teaching

The evaluation of the quality of classroom instruction can be a sticky issue. In general, students are asked to evaluate their instructors at the end of each semester. Some faculty dispute, or at least wonder about, whether students are, in fact, qualified to evaluate their teaching. In many cases, faculty have asserted that these evaluations are a more accurate assessment of instructor popularity than of the quality of instruction. Yet students are clearly a population with a vested interest in high-quality teaching and with considerable experience observing their instructors teach. This page explores some of the research literature on student evaluations of teaching, and offers some examples of other methods of evaluating instruction.

References

  • Collins, Lynn H., Joan C. Chrisler, and Kathryn Quina, eds. Career Strategies for Women: Arming Athena : 1998. SAGE publications. Chapter 5 of this book addresses the topic of student evaluations.
  • Evaluation of Teaching at the University of Alberta: January, 2009. The body of this report begins with a review of the research literature on teaching evaluations. Among its important conclusions:
    • "Another important issue is whether or not students have the skills and knowledge to measure the quality of teaching they receive. There seems to be general agreement that students are capable evaluators since their ratings correlate with those of peer evaluators and trained evaluators (Marsh & Roche, 1997)."
  • Moody, JoAnn, (http://www.diversityoncampus.com/id13.html 'Rising Above Cognitive Errors'): This booklet covers a lot of ground that's not related to student evaluations of teaching, but I think I (Mary Savina) remember that evaluating student evaluations is one of the topics.