Some subscribers to
Math-Teach might be interested in a recent post "The Value of
Student Evaluations of Teaching" [Hake (2012)]. The abstract
reads:
*******************************************
ABSTRACT: Bill Brescia of the DrEd list wrote: "We are looking
for best practices to solicit student feedback on the teaching quality
of individual faculty members where in some cases a fairly large
number of faculty are involved in a single course. What mechanism do
you use to survey the students?"
The value of student
evaluations is a hotly contested topic, witness the 496,000 hits at
<http://bit.ly/TqEilE> generated by a Google search for
"Student Evaluations" (with the quotes) on 26 Nov 2012
12:58-0800.
Judging from my own experience, and after careful consideration of the
above hits, my opinion is that:
a. Student
Evaluations of Teaching (SET's) are useful for gauging the *affective*
impact of teaching, but are worse than useless for gauging the
*cognitive* impact - see e.g. "Student Evaluations of Teaching
Are Not Valid Gauges of Teaching Performance - Yet Again!" [Hake
(2012)] at <http://bit.ly/KGK687>
b. The cognitive
impact of teaching is best measured by average normalized
pre-to-post-test gains on "Concept Inventories"
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_inventory> - see e.g.,
"The Impact of Concept Inventories On Physics Education and It's
Relevance For Engineering Education" [Hake (2011)] at
<http://bit.ly/nmPY8F>.
*******************************************
To access the
complete 6 kB post please click on <http://bit.ly/XX7OUX>.
Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Links to Articles: <http://bit.ly/a6M5y0>
Links to Socratic Dialogue Inducing (SDI) Labs:
<http://bit.ly/9nGd3M>
Academia: <http://bit.ly/a8ixxm>
Blog: <http://bit.ly/9yGsXh>
GooglePlus: <http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE>
Twitter:
<http://bit.ly/juvd52>
REFERENCES [URL
shortened by <http://bit.ly/> and accessed on 26 Nov
2012.]
Hake, R.R. 2012.
"The Value of Student Evaluations of Teaching" online on the
OPEN! AERA-L archives at <http://bit.ly/XX7OUX>. Post of 26 Nov
2012 13:35:35-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to
the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists
and are also on my blog "Hake'sEdStuff" at
<http://bit.ly/TqLDls> with a provision for
comments.