Intermediate Micro

"Optimizing the fairness of student evaluations: A study of correlations between instructor excellence, study production, learning production, and expected grades" by Richard John Stapleton; Journal of Management Education, Thousand Oaks; Jun 2001; Vol. 25, Iss. 3; pg. 269, 23 pgs

Consequently, we recommend that instructor excellence, study production, learning production, and expected grades production be weighted and ranked every time a student evaluation occurs. This will ensure that a modicum of fairness will exist for all teachers subjected to the student evaluation, regardless of the teaching style, teaching method, and ethical system that a teacher might adopt or create to produce learning in students and to satisfy the ego and survival needs and requirements of the teacher, students, colleagues, administrators, and external supporters.(from conclusion)

"Student evaluations of teaching: An exploratory study of the faculty response" Penny M Simpson; Journal of Marketing Education, Boulder; Dec 2000; Vol. 22, Iss. 3; pg. 199, 15 pgs

In examining faculty perceptions of SETs, we found that most respondents perceived SETs as problematic assessment instruments. Overall, faculty appeared to believe that SETs encourage instructors to lower educational standards, serve as a tool for student revenge, encourage overreliance on ratings in performance evaluations, and are rife with measurement issues. Because faculty members do not perceive SETs as always providing valid measurements of their teaching abilities, they may respond to SETs by (1) ignoring them and adapting courses to instructor standards of rigor; (2) adopting, either intentionally or unintentionally, lower grading and course standards to appease students; and/or (3) implementing more specific activities ranging from providing inducements to attempts to enhance academic learning in efforts to influence the ratings. When this latter response results in inducements, manipulation, leniency in grading or course work, and watching students complete evaluation forms, it is generally perceived as unethical and deserving of some punishment. Other influencing activities, though, are perceived as ethical and deserving of some reward, such as those that enhance or enrich academics (e.g., the incorporation of Web sites or in-class discussion groups).

At one small university we know of, graduating seniors in the business college realized an increase in their standing on a nationally scaled exam in finance from the 13th percentile to the 97th percentile. The most likely explanation for this dramatic rise in learning was the addition of a finance faculty member solely responsible for teaching all required finance courses. Despite this amazing learning outcome, this instructor consistently placed in the lowest third of all faculty in the college. This anecdotal evidence indicates that the current SET measures may not be sufficiently assessing the critical variable of teaching effectiveness in terms of student learning, yet the measure is instrumental in evaluating faculty.(from conclusion)

Determinants of student evaluations of global measures of instructor and course value; Ronald B Marks; Journal of Marketing Education, Boulder; Aug 2000; Vol. 22, Iss. 2; pg. 108, 12 pgs

This study suggests that student evaluations lack discriminant validity (see Greenwald 1997). No matter how reliable the measures, student evaluations are no more than perceptions and impressions. The basic conundrum is "How can students evaluate whether they learned what they should have learned when they do not know what they should have learned?" In rhetorical response, they may rely on perceptual factors, such as instructor liking/concern, workload/difficulty, expected/fairness of grading, and organization. One could, as Greenwald and Gillmore (1997) suggest, adjust for these factors with covariance techniques, but even then any objective measure of learning is absent.(from discussion)

"Grade inflation: The effects on educational quality and personal well being" Clifford H Edwards; Education, Chula Vista; Spring 2000; Vol. 120, Iss. 3; pg. 538, 9 pgs

The existence of grade inflation over the past 30 years has been consistently documented along with some of its causes and effects. Chief among the causes are changes in university administrative practices and an increased use of student evaluations of faculty.(from abstract)

Articles at JSTOR

Attiyeh, J. S., and K. G. Lumsden. 1972. "Some modern myths in teaching economics. American Economic Review" 62:429-33

Do students who like their instructors learn more? At the university level in first-year economics neither the quality of the instructors nor that of the course as evaluated by the students had any significant effect on performance on the posttest. At the school level student opinion was a significant variable with a surprising negative sign; the poorer the student considered his teacher to be, the more economics he understood.(p. 431)

From the American Economic Review (abstract only at JSTOR)

"The state of economic education: How departments of economics evaluate teaching" William E Becker; The American Economic Review, Nashville; May 1999; Vol. 89, Iss. 2; pg. 344, 6 pgs

Economists claim that the economic way of thinking is different from the perspectives taught in other disciplines. Yet economics departments appear to have followed the herd in using and structuring student evaluations of courses and instructors. Why are economics departments not challenging or at least supplementing the use of SET (student evaluations of teaching) measures more often, when studies repeatedly show that SET scores explain less than 50% of the variability in student learning and are not highly correlated with other measures of good teaching? Why is it that the sample selection, single index, and principle-agent problems inherent in the sole use of end-of-course, summary SET ratings are not more widely questioned? Why are more steps not taken to prevent some of the problems with the timing and collection of this information? Apparently, administrators in departments of economics or their superiors, or both, have come to the conclusion that the relatively lower cost of SET data is sufficient to justify their nearly exclusive use. (conclusion)

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J. Patrick Gunning
School of Economics and Trade
Kyungpook National University
1370 Sankyuk-dong, Buk-gu
Daegu 702-701 Korea

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