Considering The Use of Midterm Student
Evaluations of Learning
The following excerpt gives some excellent insights on
the benefits, as well as the cautions, of using
mid-term student evaluations of teaching. It is from
CHAPTER 3, USING STUDENT FEEDBACK TO IMPROVE TEACHING, by MICHELE
MARINCOVICH, in CHANGING PRACTICES IN EVALUATING TEACHING:
A Practical Guide to Improved Faculty Performance,
and Promotion/Tenure Decisions, by PETER SELDIN,
Pace University, AND ASSOCIATES. excerpted from
Marincovich, M., Prostko, J., & Stout, F. (1998). The Professional
Development of Graduate Teaching Assistants. Bolton, MA: Anker.
Used with permission of the publisher. Copyright © 1999
by Anker Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission from www.ankerpub.com
Although the literature on the evaluation and improvement
of teaching stresses the importance of mid-term
evaluation (Centra, 1993), too many teaching evaluation
systems are entirely preoccupied with judgments.
Most teaching centers can offer faculty various ways of obtaining
formative (improvement-oriented) feedback, either on their own
or with the help of the center. In addition to different kinds
of written mid-term forms, many of us offer the so-called
SGID (Small Group Instructional Diagnosis, Clark,
1979), a structured mid-term interview of a class
with the students divided into small groups, which
provides specific feedback on what the students like about a course,
what they feel needs improvement, and their ideas on how to carry
out the improvement. Although this method takes
approximately 20 minutes of class time, it has the
unique advantage of exposing students to what their
peers think of a course's strengths and weaknesses.
Any official teaching evaluation system should make sure that
faculty know about the availability and the desirability of mid-term
approaches. Yale is again a case in point; the Yale College dean's
letter regarding the summative evaluation system also mentions
that course improvement forms, intended for mid-term use,
will be sent to the faculty by the registrar along
with their preliminary class lists. Faculty should
also know that professors who do mid-term evaluations
can achieve higher end-of-term evaluations (Overall
& Marsh, 1979; Cohen, 1980).
Although on my campus the SGID, the ME Peer Review, and
faculty self-designed questionnaires have proved
the most popular types of mid-term student evaluation,
there are other models for obtaining useful student
feedback. At a National Science Foundation-funded workshop
for new (up to three years' experience) engineering faculty hosted
at Stanford in August 1998 by three colleagues and myself, we found
that these faculty responded positively to the suggestion of teaching
circles or quality control circles. As described by Tiberius
(1997), such circles involve the recruitment of student volunteers
from a class who agree to meet with the professor regularly
in order to convey feedback from themselves and their peers on
how the class is going. The fact that the student volunteers are
not representing simply their own reactions but are supposed
to have canvassed their peers means that students
can engage in a level of frankness to the faculty
member that they may not feel comfortable or secure
about as individuals. We should also not underestimate the benefit
to the students of being such serious and influential participants
in the instructional process.
Let me emphasize, however, that the results of any alternate
student feedback system should remain formative
and confidential. Otherwise, alternative student
feedback systems may suffer the same fate the end-of-term
evaluations have. As Centra (1993) points out, the end-of-term
ratings began as formative feedback; they became summative
when colleges and universities found themselves needing an objective
and quantifiable source of data on teaching that would help them
make sensitive and important personnel decisions.
Let me add one other final word of caution. Faculty who
devise and follow up on their own methods of obtaining
student feedback should be careful not to operate
in a vacuum. Their sincere efforts to strengthen
their classes can backfire if they respond casually to what
they think they are hearing from their students. I have worked
with several faculty who had earlier done their own mid-term
questionnaires and had changed their courses significantly
because of what they had thought were important
student suggestions. In the end, however, they had
invested serious amounts of time without getting
any more favorable student end-of-term evaluations. For example,
one junior faculty member had received complaints about being
disorganized. Because one student had suggested that he give the
class complete lecture notes, he invested literally hundreds of
hours in doing comprehensive and even elegant notes. The
students then complained that the class was boring
because the professor was closely following the
lecture notes he had given them. His student evaluations
ended up no higher than when he had started out.
On the basis of my own experience, Boice's (1991) work
on "quick starters," and the work of many
other experts (Stevens, 1987; Centra, 1993; Brinko
& Menges, 1997; Tiberius, 1997; Menges 1999), I would offer
the following guidelines to faculty who decide to solicit student
feedback on their teaching:
* Specific, concrete, behaviorally oriented information
is most useful in trying to improve your teaching
(Murray, 1984; Wilson, 1986; Geis, 1991; Menges,
1999). If the questions on your institution's student evaluation
forms do not provide this kind of information, you may need
to acquire it through other types of student feedback.
* Don't go it alone unless you have already established
a successful record for interpreting and acting
upon your student feedback. Instead, consult a peer,
your teaching and learning center, your teaching
assistant(s), or a group of interested students. Check with them
before you invest large chunks of your time in significant changes
to your course.
* Take the tinkering approach (Stevens, 1987). Make small,
modest changes and don't abandon a change the first
time it doesn't seem successful. Tinker with it, making little adjustments,
and see if it can be made successful after all.
* Although one student's suggestion can seem especially
insightful or interesting, be aware of investing
too much significance in any single opinion. Concentrate
on the issues that seem problematic for large number
of students or for a subset of students with particular needs.
Try especially hard not to take it to heart if only one or two
students are particularly critical. Every teacher has such students
at some time or other, and the reasons for their discontent may
lie more with them than with you. The one exception is if only
one or two students are brave enough to tell you that you
are making racist or gender-discriminatory remarks.
This kind of feedback must always be taken seriously.
* Start conversations with your colleagues about how
they handle difficult situations that you're struggling
with. You don't have to confess that something is
a problem for you; just ask them, for example, how
they know whether or not students are following them or whatever
else you suspect may be hard for you. Although most faculty don't
seem to begin conversations on teaching very often, most of them
seem happy to engage in one once it's begun.
* Consult the sizable, and very readable, literature on
teaching. Your Teaching and learning center staff
or any number of introductory books on teaching
(three of my favorites are Davis, 1993; Lowman, 1995;
and McKeachie, 1999) can help you think more broadly about your
teaching situation and the options open to you.
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improving
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