I wonder if what you are talking about is truly "evaluation." In my
experience the responses elicited from students regarding teacher
performance is more accurately described as opinion-polling. Evaluation
requires that some objective standards be set and measurements or judgment
made to determine how nearly the performance comes to the ideal criteria.
Such measurements and judgements are normally made by people possessing
some competence in the behaviors being evaluated. I have never seen
student "evaluations" that come close to meeting those requirements.
I am very much in favor of the solicitation of student opinions; my
teaching has often benefited from reading them. I merely wish them to be
labeled appropriately so they will not be endowed with a respect that
should be reserved for more carefully-drawn studies.
John M. Flanigan <johnf@hawaii.edu> The equation is the final arbiter.
Math Resource Instructor --Werner Heisenberg
Kapi'olani Community College The scoreboard is the final arbiter.
Honolulu, Hawaii --Bill Walton
On Sun, 22 Feb 1998, Diane Morris wrote:
> Our two-year technical college is currently using a system
> of evaluation that includes the following
> 1. All faculty are evaluated by students, which is
> bottom-up.
> 2. Faculty are evaluated by the assistant deans of
> the departments, which is top-down.
> 3. All other evaluations in the college community are
> top-down.
>
> We are now considering evaluation from the bottom up for
> all levels. Faculty have agreed that this is a good idea.
> We would like to evaluate our assistant deans. The people
> who questioned this type of evaluation are people in the
> professional staff and the secretary for the college
> president.
>
> Are any of you using the bottom-up method of evaluation
> college-wide? How are the evaluations used? Are summations
> or averages for questions given to the person being
> evaluated or are the original evaluation forms available
> for the person? Have there been problems with people in
> administration retaliating when given a poor evaluation?
> Do you have any evaluation forms to share?
>
> Thank you,
> Diane Morris
> Belmont Technical College
> 120 Fox-Shannon Place
> St. Clairsville, OH 43950
> dmorris@1st.net
>
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