Teaching Evals: 180 Reviews for Faculty

I turned off the TV as midnight Mass was ending and went to my computer to do one final check of my email. It is a habit I picked up in my corporate career because you never knew when some urgent matter would come in that needed attention. Personal inbox was empty, but my college inbox had an email from a staff member in the Provost’s office. It was time stamped at 12:01AM. ?Christmas morning at 12:01 is an odd time to send an email, but figured it was a holiday greeting or a reminder about power reductions during winter break.

Nope. ?It was the result of my Fall Semester Teaching Evaluations.

Part of me was tempted to ignore the email until Sunday, but the other part of me recognized that if I didn’t open it and read them it would be Student Evaluation of Teaching (SETs) dancing in my head and not sugar plums. ?I settled down and read them.

The literature on SETs is mixed. If you want a good review on the issues you should read Dr. Laura Langbein’s 1998 article on them (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272775707000477)

I like SETs because the remind me of a best practice from my time at Bloomberg. The best managers engaged in a practice called 180-degree reviews. Each teammate was asked to provide feedback anonymously on their manager. ?It was a beautiful system!?I was able to see first-hand how concerns of teammates were integrated to make a more cohesive and solid team.

The same is true of SETs. In teaching, like management, perception is reality. ?SETs give you an idea of how the students are feeling in the class, and by extension what their collegiate experience is like and how you can improve as an instructor. If we take SETs to heart, faculty have the unique opportunity to positively impact the academic experience of their students.

Overall students seemed to enjoy the class. When asked to rate their experience:

Class 1: 94.12% said excellent; 5.88% said it was “good.”

Class 2: 65% said excellent; 35% said “Good”

Class 3: 80% said excellent; 20% said good.

Class 4: (online) 71.43% excellent, 21.43% good, 7.14% said poor

Yet, to me that wasn’t the most important question.

My approach to teaching is to foster a learning community. It is what I enjoyed so much about my time at the University at Albany, the University of Michigan’s ICPSR Seminars, and American University.

Two questions attempt to get to that aspirational goal:

1. “Students are encouraged to ask questions are given meaningful answers.”

2. “Students are invited to share their ideas and knowledge.”

The percentages are below but in general indicates that I was mostly successful in creating a ?learning community. Empowering students to be able to share their ideas and to ask questions is critical if learning is to occur.?The challenge becomes how do I move the needle from “agree” to “strongly agree”? ?Going forward for the Spring Semester this gives me a great benchmark to work on and to improve in my teaching. ?

This week, I am finalizing my spring syllabi, and grateful for the critical feedback given by the fall semester students.

As our state motto says: "Excelsior!"

Responses:

“Students are encouraged to ask questions and are given meaningful answers.”

Class 1: 88.24% Strongly agreed; 11.76% agree.

Class 2: 70% Strongly agreed, 25% agreed, 5% neutral

Class 3: 80% Strongly agreed; 20% agreed

Class 4: 60% Strongly agreed, 33% agreed 6.67% were neutral

“Students are invited to share their ideas and knowledge”

Class 1: 82.35% Strongly agreed, 17.65% agreed

Class 2: 70% Strongly agreed, 25% agreed, 5% neutral

Class 3: ?80% Strongly agreed, 20% agreed.

Class 4: 60% Strongly Agreed, 40% agreed?