🚀 go-pugleaf

On Wed, 18 May 2005 Russell.Martin@wdn.com wrote:

> Date: 18 May 2005 06:32:22 -0700
> From: Russell.Martin@wdn.com
> Newsgroups: sci.stat.math, sci.stat.edu, sci.research.careers, aus.politics,
>     aus.general
> Subject: Re: Dropping standards
> 
>
> 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
>
>

Yep, I said that, too, in another post.