Also of interest: Greenwald, A. G., & Gillmore, G. M. (1997). No pain, no gain? The importance of measuring course workload in student ratings of instruction. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89(4), 743-751.
Cheers, Karl W. -----Original Message----- From: Jim Clark [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 03, 2008 2:00 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Student evaluations Hi A good 1988 review by Cashin of the VERY extensive literature on course evaluations can be found at: http://www.theideacenter.org/sites/default/files/Idea_Paper_20.pdf Here are some other summaries I came across in tracking down Cashin on-line. http://heqco.ca/assets/Student%20Course%20Evaluations.pdf http://www.oid.ucla.edu/publications/evalofinstruction/eval6 http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/ratingforms.html Harry Murray at U of Western Ontario did a lot of research on course evaluations, my first exposure to the issue. He found, for instance, that trained graduate student ratings correlated well with class ratings, that students rated instructors similarly after graduation as when taking the course, that a variety of micro-behaviors (Murray was originally a learning researcher), that faculty ratings improved as courses were taught repeatedly by same person, and so on. With respect to correlations with learning, see Cashin for one study. There was one notorious and much publicized example of a substantial negative correlation between evaluations and student learning, but that turned out to be graduate student lab instructors. For a meta-analysis, see: http://rer.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/51/3/281 With respect to myth of no relation between evaluations and learning (among other myths) see: https://tle.wisc.edu/node/271 Like most (all?) psychological measures, course evaluations are not perfect, but as one might expect, students can tell something meaningful about their instructor and the course after sitting in class for quite a number of hours. In fact it represents an almost ideal situation in that one has multiple raters available for a single observee (i.e., us). Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax [EMAIL PROTECTED] Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA >>> Michael Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 03-Nov-08 10:01 AM >>> Is there actually any research that shows course-end student evaluations are of much use in assessing a well prepared and taught course? Are they not more of a personality comparison between profs that the student is currently taking courses from? --Mike --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
