🚀 go-pugleaf

beliav...@aol.com wrote:

snip

>
> The following paper, which can be downloaded from
> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=426763 (membership
> is required but is free), confirms your view that student
satisfaction
> should not be overweighted as a measure of teaching quality.
Objective
> measures of student learning should be given more weight.
>
> Web-Based Student Evaluations of Professors: The Relations Between
> Perceived Quality, Easiness, and Sexiness
> JAMES FELTON
> Central Michigan University - Department of Finance and Law
> JOHN MITCHELL
> Central Michigan University - Department of Finance and Law
> MICHAEL STINSON
> Central Michigan University - Department of Computer Science
> Abstract:
> College students publicly rate their professors' teaching at
> RateMyProfessors.com, a web page where students anonymously judge
their
> professors on Quality, Easiness, and Sexiness. Using the data from
this
> web site, we examine the relations between Quality, Easiness, and
> Sexiness for 3,190 professors at 25 universities. For faculty with at
> least 10 student posts, the correlation between Quality and Easiness
is
> 0.61, and the correlation between Quality and Sexiness is 0.30. Using
> simple linear regression, we find that about half of the variation in
> Quality is a function of Easiness and Sexiness. Accordingly, these
> results suggest that about half of the variation in student opinion
> survey scores used by universities for promotion, tenure, and
teaching
> award decisions may be due to the easiness of the course and the
> sexiness of the professor. When grouped into sexy and non-sexy
> professors, the data reveal that students give sexy-rated professors
> higher Quality and Easiness scores. Based on these findings,
> universities need to rethink the use of student opinion surveys as a
> valid measure of teaching effectiveness. High student opinion survey
> scores might well be viewed with suspicion rather than reverence,
since
> they might indicate a lack of rigor, little student learning, and
grade
> inflation.
>
> Keywords: Teaching, Evaluation, Student Opinion, Halo Effect
> JEL Classifications: I21, J44, M51

Easy + sexy = quality?  Yes, that's a good equation for a date
but hardly appropriate for a teacher. ;-)

Cheers,
Russell