🚀 go-pugleaf

 The discussion on student evaluations has been an interesting one to follow.
 A few additional thoughts:

 o   Should student evaluations be considered for tenure?  Consider that they
     are successfully used in industry for similar purposes.  Most industry
     trainers are evaluated, in part, on their student evaluations.  Their
     promotions, raises, and bonuses are based on student evaluations.

     And why not?  Many training enterprises are for-profit ventures.  If
     students don't like the courses, they tell their friends and colleagues and
     soon, no one attends courses.  Then, the company goes out of business.

     That does NOT mean industry is insensitive to the issue of learning;
     many industry groups do not solely rely on a single type of student
     assessment (see next point).


 o   I did not notice anyone citing the literature on educational
     evaluation when commengint on  the role of student evaluations play
     in the evaluation process.

     This literature suggests a four-step approach to evaluation:

     1.  Immediate reaction of the student taken AFTER the course is
         complete.  This is the traditional student evaluation, although
         most are taken one or two sessions BEFORE a class is complete.

     2.  Performance of students on a post-class examination.  This could
         either be a formal test or a final project that integrates all of
         the material taught in the course.  This determines how well students
         learned the material.  (Students might like their professor but still
         might not learn much.)

     3.  Long-term reaction to the course.  This usually involves assessing
         students' responses several months (or years) after taking a course.
         These surveys also investigate whether students' feel they were able
         to make use of the material taught in the course.  This approach is
         similar to the exit-interviews and alumni evaluations that others
         have described.

     4.  Long-term impact of the knowledge.  This evaluation determines whether
         students are making use of the material in other contexts.  A simple
         way to assess this would be testing students for pre-reqs in advanced
         courses.  A more complex way to assess this would involve reviewing
         papers from other courses and post-university job performance to
         determine whether students were actually using the material learned.
         This type of evaluation is most difficult and, in my limited
         experience, I have never seen adequate evaluation of long-term

     Where does peer evaluation fit into this system?  In two places:

     1.  During course development.  Peers evaluate course materials BEFORE
         they are used (or evaluate a pilot course) to determine the quality
         of the course content.  In this instance, peers serve as content
         experts.

     2.  After each evaluation.  Peers help the instructor identify the cause
         of specific problems and resolve them. In this instance, peers serve
         as coaches rather than as critics.

 o  Should student evaluations be published?  No.  As the previous item
    indicates, student evaluations are only one part of a total evaluation
    of a course.  (Privacy issues, too, must be considered.  I do not work
    in academia, so I do not know if other personnel information, like job
    evaluations and salary are made public.  If not, then publication is
    inappropriate because it is inconsistent with personnel policy.)

 One final thought on evaluation.  Few of us like to be evaluated by others,
 especially when we feel that the evaluators know less than us.  And if
 students knew more than us, why would they be taking courses from us?
 But our success as educators is dependent on the success of our students.
 And if we have failed to be successful with them, then we have failed as
 educators.
 "
 Saul Carliner, Ph.D Student            CUISACX@GSUVM1.GSU.EDU
 Instructional Techology                404/238-5327 (w)
 Georgia State University               404/892-3945 (h)