The Insiders
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Oct
11
UBC Faculty Association has a bad week: part 1
Posted by: Neal Yonson | October 11, 2007 | 3 Comments
Two items of interest from the UBC Faculty Association this month. See above post. Sources from the Faculty Focus (click!) newsletter.
Teaching evaluation ire
The Association has called upon the university to put an immediate moratorium on the new teacher evaluation system to be implemented this term. The new system would see “modular” forms filled out by students. Some modules would be available only at the professor, department, or faculty level, while one module (the “university module”)would be published and available to students university-wide. Instructors would give their consent before the university module for their courses would be posted.
The six University Module questions are HERE. Have a gander and see what you think.
This evaluation system has gone through a lengthy committee process at the university’s Senate (a body that makes all academic decisions), and was finally passed last spring. It’s generally thought that a greater amount of public accountability for teaching will increase the culture of excellent teaching at UBC. The AMS has been supportive of this evaluation system. Not so the faculty association. In their September issue of the Faculty Focus newsletter, Faculty Association president Brenda Peterson wrote an open letter to UBC president Stephen Toope, calling upon him not to implement the new system. The process and speed of implementation, the online posting mechanism, the questions themselves (which were deemed too focused on the student’s “learning comfort”), and the availability of the data were criticized. Essentially, the claims are that any publicly available evaluations would infringe upon their members’ privacy, become a popularity contest, and encourage high marks and grade inflation.
Not all teachers think that though. At my lab’s Thanksgiving dinner, my supervisor Dr. Curtis Suttle, associate dean of science, said to me that he had no problems with the new system. “I think it’s fine. There’s no reason why the information shouldn’t be out there” he said (in between bastings of the magnificent turkey). “For science, it’s not that different from what we already do. It might be a bigger change for others.”
Personally, I think that the faculty association underestimates students. We aren’t vindictive. We aren’t brats. The teacher-student relationship is a relationship like any other: it demands respect and fairness from both sides. Students are perfectly willing to give good teaching scores to the instructors of challenging courses if those instructors were clear, organized, engaging, and willing to help – yes, even if they only scraped a C.
Lots more background on this:
- Student Senator Aidha Sheikh’s summary of the May 16th Senate meeting where the policy was passed
- The Senate policy itself
- Ubyssey news piece on faculty association reaction
Comments
3 Comments so far
We aren’t vindictive. We aren’t brats.
I think you overestimate. While most students aren’t overly immature in person or while asked to give an opinion of something, the anonymous nature of evaluation forms does lead to completely unwarranted personal attacks and petty complaints.
I think you’re also unrealistic in thinking that there isn’t large truth to the fact that teachers who grade easily would be more favourably ranked than those who do not. It’s simply the nature of students to be more pleased with an instructor, especially in retrospect, if they have done well in the class.
While I obviously support teaching excellence, I am less than convinced that widespread publicizing of what students think about teachers is actually useful in attaining that goal.
“I think you’re also unrealistic in thinking that there isn’t large truth to the fact that teachers who grade easily would be more favourably ranked than those who do not. It’s simply the nature of students to be more pleased with an instructor, especially in retrospect, if they have done well in the class.”
The research I’ve seen doesn’t support this view. In fact, research has shown students to be consistently more sophisticated in their approach to evaluations on teaching than they are given credit for.
Theall, M., Franklin, J., & Ludlow, L. H. (1990). Attributions and retributions: Student ratings
and the perceived causes of performance. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the
American Educational Research Association, Boston.
Howard, G. S., & Maxwell, S. E. (1982). Do grades contaminate student evaluations of
instruction? Research in Higher Education, 16, 175-188.
Howard, G. S., & Maxwell, S. E. (1980). Correlation between student satisfaction and grades: A case of mistaken causation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 72(6), 810-820.
-Jeff Friedrich
AMS President
I think it is fair to say that in any large enough class, a few students will be vindictive and/or brats, especially in an anonymous evaluation setting. But isn’t it better to let them have their say and, meanwhile, let the reasonable majority of students be heard?
In other words, let the statistics take over in this case; the fact that individual comments will not be published is already one better than ratemyprofessor.com, and a higher response (under the proposed system, at least in theory) will give a clearer picture of teacher ability.
While not useful for a rank ordering of teachers in terms of skill, this type of evaluation can help identify the very best and the very worst of UBC’s instructors. There are few practical ways to do this, especially when it comes to the latter group.