At the end of every semester, University of Idaho professors turn to their students to evaluate and assess their teaching abilities and their course.
Yet, according to Jennifer Johnson-Leung, chair of the Teaching and Advising Committee, the student evaluations are not an accurate test of the true quality of a course or professor.
“These student evaluations of teaching don”t correlate with student learning,” Johnson-Leung said, speaking at a Faculty Senate meeting Tuesday. “They”re not a measure of teacher quality.”
The Teaching and Advising Committee”s goal is to improve the evaluation process so it has a positive impact. Johnson-Leung said since the university is mandated to have student evaluations, they should make sure they assess the level of education students receive rather than the level of popularity a professor has gained.
“No matter how we change these forms, they”re not going to measure instructional quality,” she said. “That”s not going to happen.”
The committee developed several changes for the evaluations last year, but UI President Chuck Staben rejected the changes. Johnson-Leung said she thinks the main objection was toward the changes made to the two mandatory questions at the end of the evaluation form.
She said the changes were mainly focused on the wording of the questions, and in the proposed version, there was no question specifically asking students to rate the overall quality of the course or the instructor.
“Those are the questions that are tied into the research on the validity of these tools,” she said.
Johnson-Leung said in her discussions about the efficiency of evaluations, she found most of the people she talked to agreed the evaluations did not assess the quality of an instructor.
“I think in some sense we”re beating a dead horse over these questions,” said Faculty Senate member Mike Anderson from the College of Engineering.
In fact, Johnson-Leung said she doesn”t think any changes to the forms would improve them enough to be a useful assessment of professors. A solution to this issue is to simply create new tools to suit their needs and to develop instructors to take different approaches for teaching, Johnson-Leung said.
To better understand and address the needs of professors and other faculty, Johnson-Leung looked to Faculty Senate for support. She said the Teaching and Advising Committee is planning to hold a brainstorming session Oct. 13 to discuss multiple issues, including what makes up good teaching.
She said UI should make it a priority to train students to be learners, which would not only help the student feedback rate, but also improve the current enrollment issues.
“If we are committed to bringing every qualified student from Idaho to this university, then we do have to know how to teach them,” she said.
Erin Bamer can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @ErinBamer