S5 E6 | Top of the Class: Attractive Teachers with Lenient Grading Get High Marks

The Dissidents

In this week's episode frequent contributors Mark Horowitz, Nafees Alam join Elizabeth to discuss quality college teaching and how it is measured. University students typically complete one of several commercially available evaluation forms at the end of each semester. Administrators use responses to evaluate faculty for reappointment, tenure, and for other forms of recognition. The research on student evaluations of teaching has been mixed, but overwhelmingly show at best a weak relationship between teaching evaluations and student learning. The author of a recent paper revisited prior work and used a variety of data analytic techniques to debunk the usefulness of student evaluations all together. The author, Bob Uttl, describes these evaluations as a highway to hell, as they fuel faculty popularity contests over merit. Mark, Nafees and Elizabeth can find little to disagree with, and each adds their own examples of documented confounds such as whether the course is considered easy, has lenient policies, or an attractive teacher (better ratings), versus more difficult, is science or math oriented, or the teacher has an accent (lower ratings). We try to end on a high note by suggesting different methods, but we admit that a definition of good teaching is elusive and far too nuanced to be captured by a single measure or snapshot in time.

Podcast notesUttl, B. (2024) Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET): Why the Emperor Has No Clothes and What We Should Do About It. Hu Arenas 7, 403–437.

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