Faculty Focus

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college student ratings

End-of-Course Ratings: Lessons from Faculty Who Improved

Two researchers used end-of-course ratings data to generate a cohort of faculty whose ratings in the same course had significantly improved over a three-year period. They defined significant improvement as a 1.5-point increase on an 8-point scale. In this cohort, more than 50 percent of faculty had improved between 1.5 and 1.99 points, another 40 percent between 2.0 and 2.99 points, and the rest even more.

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Maryellen Weimer, PhD December 3, 2010

Two Ways to Make Student Feedback More Valuable

Unless they have a real problem with how the course was run, most students fill out end-of-course evaluations so quickly there’s often very little valuable information in them. Here are two ways that Wayne Hall, psychology professor at San Jacinto College in Texas, elicits helpful feedback on his courses:

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Rob Kelly January 7, 2010

Student Evaluations of Instructors: A Good Thing?

These student evaluations are so much a part of our system and have become so routine for our students and faculty that I have seldom questioned their value or necessity. But are they really (as Martha Stewart might say) “a good thing?” […]

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Thomas R. McDaniel PhD December 17, 2008

Answers for Those Afraid to Take a Hit on College Student Ratings

At a workshop on learner-centered teaching, a participant told us that philosophically she couldn’t agree more with the need to make students more responsible for their own learning, but she couldn’t go there because her ratings would take a hit. I assumed this meant she was a new faculty member and under scrutiny for tenure. […]

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Maryellen Weimer, PhD November 13, 2008

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