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Why Student Ratings?The data most widely used in the evaluation of college teaching come from student ratings. These data can be a blessing or a bane for the instructor, depending on how they are collected, interpreted, and used. What's the real story on ratings? By Michael Theall, University of Illinois at Springfield Data from student ratings can provide valuable information on teaching effectiveness for students, teachers, and administrators. But these ratings are, too often, misinterpreted, misused, or used to support the interpreter's biases and beliefs. For example, one of the first issues in evaluation is to determine the purpose for it. When we gather information to review, explore, or improve, we use the term formative evaluation. When our purpose is to make decisions about merit, promotion, or tenure, then we use the term summative evaluation. It may seem obvious that summative evaluation requires more technical rigor and a wider array of data than formative evaluation, but the unfortunate reality is that summative decisions about teaching are often made on the basis of student ratings data alone. The result: a great deal of suspicion, anxiety, and even hostility toward ratings by faculty, and deservedly so. But it doesn't have to be this way. Faculty and adminstrators, working together, can make better decisions about the teaching effectiveness of faculty if they are well-informed about the extensive research on student ratings and know how to use these tools in effective evaluative processes. In the following pages, I hope to offer the reader some insight into effective interpretation and use of student ratings and to suggest ways that student ratings can be used by administrators and faculty as part of an overall plan to improve teaching and learning. Meet Michael Theall |
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