Hi The literature on grade inflation suggests it might be associated with instructor status (part v full time) and rank (security?). Seems that grades which determine completion rates would be very easily manipulated.
Jim Sent from my iPhone On Apr 4, 2015, at 2:22 PM, "Jeffry Ricker, Ph.D." <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Hi all, We all know about the controversy surrounding the use of student course evaluations to rate instructors’ teaching. But with the current emphasis on student retention (e.g., the percentage of first-semester Freshmen who enroll in second-semester classes), I’m seeing the emergence of a new metric to rate and compare instructors: the percentage of "successful completions” (the percentage of students earning a final grade of C or better) in their classes. Many studies of first-year students have shown that successful completion of courses is a primary correlate of retention. The funding of public colleges often is based on formulas that use the total number of credit hours being taken at a college to estimate the number of "full-time student equivalents”(or something similar). It’s easier to increase this by retaining the students you already have than by attracting new students. And with decreasing state funding of higher education (in Arizona, annual state funding for our community college district will be $0—yes, that’s a zero—beginning July 1st), many colleges are scrambling to increase retention. Thus, some (many? most? all?) colleges are examining data on successful completions, and even breaking it down so that one can compare different instructors teaching a particular course. For example, yesterday, I found data on my college’s site showing, by semester, the number of “successful completers” in each section of introductory psychology for at least the last seven years. I suspect that administrators at many colleges are looking more and more closely at these data as the financial situations at their institutions worsen. So my question: is there research that looks at the validity of using successful completion data to evaluate the teaching effectiveness of individual instructors? I’m having a bit of trouble finding good research on this. Cn anyone help? Best, Jeff P.S. And by the way, I’m asking because it seems likely that a major confound would be differences among instructors in expectations and standards (i.e., rigor of the course), even when they all are teaching a course that is nominally the same. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeffry Ricker, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scottsdale Community College 9000 E. Chaparral Road Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Office: SB-123 Phone: (480) 423-6213 Fax: (480) 423-6298 --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13251.645f86b5cec4da0a56ffea7a891720c9&n=T&l=tips&o=43612 (It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken) or send a blank email to leave-43612-13251.645f86b5cec4da0a56ffea7a89172...@fsulist.frostburg.edu<mailto:leave-43612-13251.645f86b5cec4da0a56ffea7a89172...@fsulist.frostburg.edu> --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=43613 or send a blank email to leave-43613-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
