Because this feedback is collected at the end of the course, it cannot be used to make data-informed, mid-semester adjustments to your teaching plan.īy contrast, collecting feedback during the course allows you to make timely changes to address any instructional or classroom management/logistical concerns.Īll of these factors should be taken into consideration when using some of the student course evaluation data in the evaluation of teaching. When used for formative purposes - that is, to inform improvements to your teaching - there is one key limitation to using the information from student course evaluations as the sole source of data. Lastly, some research shows bias in student responses on course evaluations that disproportionately and negatively impact women and instructors from marginalized groups (Boring et al., 2016 Kreitzer & Sweet-Cushman, 2021 MacNell et al., 2015). Recent meta-analyses also show no correlation between student preferences for learning as surmised from course evaluations and actual student learning (Uttl et al., 2017). They also raise concerns about how course evaluation statistics are typically and misleadingly reported (e.g, reporting only means and not acknowledging low response rates, and thus not accounting for the full and possibly multimodal distribution of scores) and incorrectly analyzed (e.g., comparing means for individual instructors to departmental or college averages). For example, Stark & Freishtat (2014) cite measurement issues with student course evaluation ratings, such as overall “teaching effectiveness” ratings being influenced by irrelevant factors, including the time of day of class sessions and the type of course. Recent research has called into question the validity of student course evaluations on measuring teaching effectiveness (e.g., Spooren et al., 2013). Limitations of Student Course Evaluations of TeachingĪ common source of student feedback on your teaching, which is oftentimes used for evaluative purposes and thus may also be considered a rather high-stakes assessment of our teaching, is students’ course evaluations collected at the end of a semester.
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