>Unfortunately, I got slaughtered on question 16 ("how does this professor
>compare overall to your other professors"). Since student responses to
>question 16 provide the only basis for evaluating the quality of teaching
>here (and, I suspect, most schools), I stopped doing this.
>
 
You raise a good point about question 16.  I don't personally have a problem
with it, just the emphasis that is sometimes put on it.  I think that
student input plays an important role in the evaluation of professors.  If
someone is not getting solid evaluations from students, then I would think
that the appropriate persons should look into the matter.
 
Again, the problem arises when question 16 is overemphasized.  In such a
case, it serves not only as an impediment to professors trying new things,
but also serves as a "crutch" to those who merely want to "get by."  In
other words, these latter folks can say, "Hey, I got high marks on question
16, I must be great teacher."
 
I've heard it justified on the basis of "you've got to keep the cutomers
satisifed."   But, who, really, are the customers?  Certainly the students
are a part of the customer base, but they are only one part.  Tuition pays
only part of the cost of a student's education.  Taxpayers usually pay the
rest.  What are they getting?  Are they satisfied?  Don't we have a debt to
the community as a whole (who pay for the educations of the unknown student)
when we educate students as leaders and decision-makers?  Do they get to
score us on question 16?
 
What about the businesses for which we are training students?  Do we send
out question 16 to them?  Even when we do ask for evaluation from others,
usually they are only evaluating the final product (the students they
hired), not the individual professors.  Is it possible that a particular
business might love our product/employee  precisely because that employee
learned some great skills from a professor she blasted on question 16?!
 
Obviously, it is difficult to evaluate teaching (as opposed, to, perhaps,
research).  But I'm afraid that this difficulty has in many cases led
administrations to rely too much on student evaluations.  Maybe it's up to
us to suggest new ways of teacher evaluation that, among other things, take
into account all the "stakeholders"  (damn, I hate those trendy buzzwords).
 
My 1.5 cents (assistant professor),
 
 
 
Kent Schenkel
University of North Carolina at Wilmington
[log in to unmask]