17: Measuring Student Learning to Document Faculty Teaching Effectiveness

Abstract

Recent research has questioned the validity of student ratings as proxy measures for how much students learn, and this learning is a commonly accepted meaning of faculty teaching effectiveness. Student ratings capture student satisfaction more than anything else. Moreover, the overriding assessment criterion in accreditation and accountability—that applied to programs, schools, and institutions—is student learning, so it only makes sense to evaluate faculty by the same standard. This chapter explains and evaluates course‐level measures of student learning based on data that are easy for faculty to collect and administrators to use.

The Relationship of Student Evaluations of Teaching to Future Performance in a Chemistry Course Sequence

“…However, one might be forgiven for wondering if administrators are aware of this student proclivity given that the vast majority of colleges and universities continue to use survey-style SETs as their primary indicator of teaching quality. We reiterate statements in previous literature that at best, SETs may measure perceived learning, which has little if any relationship to actual learning. ,, However, they may simply assess something more akin to satisfaction with the learning experience . It is time to seriously consider replacing SETs with a more meaningful indicator of faculty teaching effectiveness.…”

“…Even accepting Cohen’s widely shared definition of teaching effectiveness in terms of student learning, discerning the degree of learning that takes place in university courses is difficult. Course-specific standardized tests are available only in a few disciplines, and even then, typically only for introductory level courses . There is fairly strong evidence that students make better grades in classes taught by instructors they rate highly, but the causal direction of this relationship is not yet clear.…”

“…At best, then, SETs measure perceived learning, which may have a limited relationship to actual learning. However, it is possible that they measure something more akin to satisfaction with the learning experience …”

“…Course-specific standardized tests are available only in a few disciplines, 12 and even then, typically only for introductory level courses. 13 There is fairly strong evidence that students make better grades in classes taught by instructors they rate highly, 11 but the causal direction of this relationship is not yet clear. It may be that if students are taught well, they report that in high SET scores, and because of the superior teaching they have encountered they make higher grades.…”

Developing Peer Review of Instruction in an Online Master Course Model

“…The reliability of the practice has been strengthened through increasing sophistication of both the design of the questions and the analysis of the results. At the same time, however, it has also been questioned as the basis of personnel decisions (Nilson, 2012;Nilson, 2013).…”