Assessment Update: Web Corner

Web Corner

	Student ratings of instruction May/June 2001 v13#3, pp 12-13. E. Schechter, A. Testa, D. Eder. Text & links updated August 2004.
	Student ratings of instruction can help faculty members fine-tune teaching methods, often contribute to faculty evaluations and rewards, and can be part of program effectiveness assessments. This column offers three different types of Web resources: information about doing and using student ratings, about individual institutions' student rating systems, and about using the Web to gather student ratings. Many articles, guidelines and pointers, and bibliographies are available on the Web (try a Google search for ("student evaluation" and faculty) in the .edu domain). The University of Illinois Office of Instructional Resources' on-line bibliography is a good starting place . Quick summaries of the research on student evaluations include "Student Ratings: 15 Common Beliefs & Misconceptions" from Carnegie-Mellon University's Center for Teaching Excellence and "What Do They Know Anyway" by Richard Felder at North Carolina State University. "Evaluating New-Student Seminars & Other First-Year Courses via Course-Evaluation Surveys" by Joe Cuseo at Marymount College includes suggestions for designing, administering, and analyzing student evaluations. More extensive reviews include papers by William Cashin (#s 20, 22, & 32 from Kansas State University's IDEA Center -- select "IDEA Papers" to see a list of available papers) and a series of critiques by William Haskell. The brief article "Student Ratings Offer Useful Input to Teacher Evaluations" by statistician Michael Scriven summarizes supports for and threats to student-evaluations' validity. Scriven's comments are useful guidelines for comparing Cashin's and Haskell's views. A number of institutions post information about their student evaluation systems on the Web. All of the sites listed in the next few paragraphs offer guidelines for administering evaluations and using the resulting information, such as Villanova University's guide for new faculty members about their Course and Teacher Survey (CATS). Many sites include access to downloadable versions of their rating forms, such as the University of California-Santa Barbara's Evaluation System for Courses and Instruction (ESCI). Southeastern Louisiana University's Student Opinion of Teaching (SOT) site includes guidelines for analyzing and using students' open-ended comments. Kansas State University's IDEA system is available to other universities, and KSU faculty can also use the TEVAL system. Information about both available from KSU's Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning. The University of Texas at Austin's Course-Instructor Survey site has examples of questionnaires customized for different types of courses. Some institutions post student ratings as well as information about their evaluation systems. Grinnell College's site includes summary reports. Texas A&M students, faculty, and staff can see results from their Student Ratings of Faculty (SRF) for individual faculty and courses. Public-access sites with individual results include the University of Colorado at Boulder's Faculty Course Questionnaire (FCQ) and Florida International University's data from the Florida State Unviersity system's Student Assessment of Instruction (SUSSAI). A Web-based version of the University of Washington's Instructional Assessment System (IAS) is available for use with online courses, and Pennsylvania State University has a Web version of their Student Evaluation of Educational Quality (SEEQ). IOTA Instructional Systems' MyClass Evaluation, a commercially-available system for customizable Web-based student evaluations, has an on-line demonstration. The "Student assessment of courses and faculty" section of North Carolina State University's meta-list has links to more examples of web-based student evaluations.
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Last updated: August 31, 2004
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Information Regarding this Site: Ephraim Schechter