Expected Grades Correlate with Evaluation of Teaching

Teaching Performance, Service, and Scholarship: The Rewarding of U.S. Media and Communication Faculty Members’ Teaching in Tenure and Promotion Documents

“…Course context is an aspect to record for each course to help leadership to detect response patterns. Contextual factors to consider include instructor gender and race, personality, lecturing style, rank, and grading leniency; class attributes (e.g., lecture-only, student interest, class workload, course difficulty, class size, online synchronous and asynchronous, requirement); and student college year (Bode, 1994;Centra, 1993;Hudson, 1989). Additional patterns to examine include the halo effect in which people approach a questionnaire from a gestalt perspective, which means that people (i.e., students) often do not differentiate the various categories such as course organization, teaching effectiveness, and instructor responsiveness (Feeley, 2002).…”

Grade Inflation: A Leadership Opportunity for Schools of Education?

“…Easier grading at the undergraduate level is directly related in part to student ratings of teaching, particularly in light of the new wave of students who are quick to criticize high grading standards ~Trout, 1998!. Studies in various disciplines have found significant correlation between student ratings of instructors and expected grades of students ~Cashin, 1988; Goldberg & Callahan, 1991;Hudson, 1989!. For example, a recent study at the University of Washington found that professors who were easy graders received better student evaluations than did the professors who were tougher ~Archibold, 1998; Wilson, 1998!. Although some academics argue that the higher ratings are entirely attributable to increased academic achievement, the more candid and cogent interpretation is that a significant contributing factor is faculty catering, in terms of grades, to student influence, in terms of ratings ~Goldman, 1985; Jansen, 1987!. For example, in a national survey of deans of colleges of education and of colleges of arts and sciences, over 70% of the respondents agreed that the use of student evaluations as a consideration for promotion and tenure was a major reason for grade inflation ~Nelson & Lynch, 1984!.…”

Grade Inflation: A Leadership Opportunity for Schools of Education?

“…Easier grading at the undergraduate level is directly related in part to student ratings of teaching, particularly in light of the new wave of students who are quick to criticize high grading standards ~Trout, 1998!. Studies in various disciplines have found significant correlation between student ratings of instructors and expected grades of students ~Cashin, 1988; Goldberg & Callahan, 1991;Hudson, 1989!. For example, a recent study at the University of Washington found that professors who were easy graders received better student evaluations than did the professors who were tougher ~Archibold, 1998; Wilson, 1998!. Although some academics argue that the higher ratings are entirely attributable to increased academic achievement, the more candid and cogent interpretation is that a significant contributing factor is faculty catering, in terms of grades, to student influence, in terms of ratings ~Goldman, 1985; Jansen, 1987!. For example, in a national survey of deans of colleges of education and of colleges of arts and sciences, over 70% of the respondents agreed that the use of student evaluations as a consideration for promotion and tenure was a major reason for grade inflation ~Nelson & Lynch, 1984!.…”