According to a new study, based on research at two schools - Northern Iowa and Southestern Oklahoma State - a significant number of college students aren't entirely candid when completing their teaching evaluations. This from the Des Moines Register:
About a third of students surveyed at both schools admitted they had stretched the truth on anonymous teacher evaluations, which teachers at colleges circulate at semester's end. A majority, 56 percent, said they know other students who have done the same. Twenty percent of participants admitted they had lied on the comments section of the evaluations. The good news: Students fib in some cases to make their instructors look good, the study shows. The bad news: More often, they do it to punish professors they don't like.
No shock, I suppose. On the other hand, public school teacher evaluations seem to have more utility than we might have supposed. The Times reported early results from a study funded by the Gates Foundation:
Teachers whose students described them as skillful at maintaining classroom order, at focusing their instruction and at helping their charges learn from their mistakes are often the same teachers whose students learn the most in the course of a year, as measured by gains on standardized test scores, according to a progress report on the research.
My own sense is that law school teaching evaluations provide insights into various things - some relevant, some not. For example, law students seem to prefer witty, entertaining and/or self-effacing profs. And they seem to prefer those teachers most when they deliver blackletter law.
One thing I've learned after reading tons of evaluations as associate dean is that some of the most engaged, challenging professors get mixed reviews from students. They get their share of great ratings, but they also have objectors. I'll be honest: I get a little nervous if student support is too universal. Teachers who push hard are bound to alienate a few students. That's a price worth paying, in my view.
Try not to over think student evals. If a student does not like a professor he will give him a bad eval. If a student likes a professor he will give him a good eval. Maybe a few students have ulterior motives but on the whole if you have bad evals and your colleague has good evals then you can assume that the students are enjoying your colleague's class more and getting more out of it, no matter how upsetting that may be. Students have had dozens of teachers and professors by the time they reach you, so they know how the game works. They do not think every professor they have treats them unfairly or throws curveballs but if they indicate that they think you are doing so it is not exactly something to run bury your head in the sand about.
Posted by: law student | December 16, 2010 at 11:32 AM
Moreover, they are the only feedback you have. If you are not going to rely on them then what else do you propose to rely on? They are the only gauge you have about what students think of your teaching.
Posted by: law student | December 16, 2010 at 11:34 AM
I have noted that my colleauges who are functional, good to work with, and productive in terms of faculty governance all get very good teaching evaluations. The colleauges who are self-absorbed, obnoxious, and counter-productive in terms of faculty governenace all get very poor teaching evaluations. Then the bad teacher/bad colleauge group puts the "well, I demand a lot of the students" spin on it, while the rest of us are thinking "if I can't understand your point in a faculty meeting, I think I know why you get bad evaluations." Student evaluations have to be taken with a grain of salt, but they are not useless. These students aren't dumb.
Anyone who strikes the "demanding teachers get bad evaluations" and "pandering teachers get good ones" chord is suspicious in my book. Most of us get okay evaluations, and most of us are okay as teachers and also okay as colleauges. But beware those who get the bad evaluations. It's not because they are demanding of students -- it's because they are useless to students and most likely their colleauges as well.
Posted by: Mark | December 16, 2010 at 09:25 PM
There is a recent Journal of Political Economy article on the subject: http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/scarrell/profqual2.pdf.
The interesting conclusions: 1. "Professors who excel at promoting contemporaneous student achievement teach in ways that improve their
student evaluations but harm the follow-on achievement of their students in more advanced classes." 2. "Student evaluations reward professors who increase achievement in the contemporaneous course being taught, not those who increase deep learning."
The data are not from law school, alas, but the paper is instructive on the issue and supports the "demanding teachers get bad evaluations" story. Obviously, some "demanding" teachers are impossibly unclear in the classroom. Some obnoxious people create bad learning environments. But it seems that there is some reason to credit the story that deep learning is not what students want -- and giving them what they don't want can negatively impact evaluations.
Posted by: Ethan Leib | December 17, 2010 at 12:41 PM
I agree with Dan's observations. I think Mark's comments above are correct, but would like to look at them somewhat differently. What makes a colleague "functional" and "good to work with"? There is a subjective aspect to being a good colleague just as there is with being perceived as a good teacher - and I think often it is the non-threatening, non-challenging personality that does well - the crowd pleaser, in other words. I think this post on students evals, and the study on the perceptions of profs going through the tenure process that was recently posted, are related. Are the perspectives of students and law profs affected by their expectations of what constitutes a "good prof" or colleague? How do race, sexuality, gender and age fit in here? I think it's important not to forget the subjective aspect of all this - and what affects our perceptions. Grading of the prof -- as colleague or teacher -- is, unfortunately, not blind.
Posted by: Nancy | December 18, 2010 at 02:51 PM
1. "Professors who excel at promoting contemporaneous student achievement teach in ways that improve their
student evaluations but harm the follow-on achievement of their students in more advanced classes." 2. "Student evaluations reward professors who increase achievement in the contemporaneous course being taught, not those who increase deep learning."
So challenging professors who increase deep learning (whatever that term means) are getting poor reviews? How do we know they are increasing deep learning? Couldn't it be more the effect of getting out of their stifling classroom and moving on that makes it appear in retrospect that the challenging professor was beneficial to their development when in fact he added no value to it at all? I imagine that once you leave a confusing class where the professor hides the ball and move on to a more conventional classroom that student achievement appears by all metrics to skyrocket.
Posted by: student | December 19, 2010 at 01:53 PM