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Student Evaluation: The Red Herring of the Decade
Nearly a decade has slipped away since the use of student evaluations became routine procedure a t universities and colleges throughout the country. This sudden invasion of the sanctity of the classroom was rapid and spectacular; it should now he possible to look back over the last few years and see what student evaluation has accomplished. Unfortunately it was spawned under the least favorable circumstance-pressure. In many instances it was the result of a gesture by harassed administrations in response to the demands of militant students in an ugly frame of mind. Without doubt evaluation of teaching would he with us now in some shape or form since there has been an increasing demand for documented evidence of ability by those making promotion and tenure decisions, hut the atmosphere on many campuses in the late sixties was not the most conducive to reasoned planning. Since that time some of the country's greatest educators and psychologists have studied the problem extensively, both on a broad basis and with regard to asingle discipline, so we should be ahle to savor the results of the efforts of some very experienced people. An abundance of literature has heen written on the suhject (1,2) but remarkably little has been written by chemists or even physical scientists ( 3 4 ) .The mind boggles at the number of man-hours spent by administrators, faculty, students, and computer programmers in designing and processing the ultimate evaluation form and a t the weight of paper consumed in using it. However. we should be able to observe some dramatic results if the evaluation process is achieving what it set out to do. The ~ r i m a r vfunction of anv. tvpe .. of evaluation is to hiehlixht st;enKrhs and weaknesses in the educational procesa so that it mns hr im~rwc~el. hovefully to the satisfaction ofeverybody cbncernek Thus a badlyhesigned syllabus, an unsuitable text, or an ineffective instructor can be quickly locared and ohvio~~sly student evaluations hiwe valuihle input fordisnwrrinp such prot~lems.Thesyllabus and the text can he altered r e l & i ~ e l ~ ~ ~ a i n hut l e s merely sl~ informing an instructor that he has a low score on an evaluation does not automatically mean that a change in his teaching methods will solve the problem. Educators have debated since time immemorial what makes a teacher successful and they will continue to debate the suhject because there is no instant success formula nor are there readily defined parameters that will guarantee success to any particular person. This is what teachine is all about. a series of exanisite intangibles that refuse to conform to any fixed set of conditions, that must he modified for everv new variable that is introduced, in which some of the variables cannot be defined or mav not even be known: in short, a computer scientist's nightmare. Student evaluations will pick outthe consistently outstanding and abysmal instructors hut most of us are in that middle 91~0u,hirh means that wearr averagr-a disagreeable Ishrl since one ofthe requiremrnts for a successful instructor is that h v pussc~ssR ce'rtain amount of self-confidenceand be iornewl~ategotisrical. There are other positive aspects to student evaluations apart from the obvious highlighting of fundamental program weaknesses. An enormous quantity of statistical information has been collected over a number of years which has proved to be very valuable in the continuing improvement of student evaluation methods. Interestingly, however, a large amount of disagreement has emerged in the analysis of responses to 22 / Journal of Chemical Education
questions relating to class size, ability of the student, temDerament and amearance of the instructor. and even the .. usefulness of the student (and other) evaluation procedures. It would therefore seem Dremature at this staee. when the whole process of evaluatibn, as indicated by the diversity of the responses, is still in its infancy, to use it as a coercive weapon with faculty who are genuinely concerned with trying to contribute to a high quality education. Finally, on the poiitive side we must consider the students themselves. Students maintain they like to be involved in decisions concerning the programs that they have chosen, which is an attitude to he encouraged. If students can feel that they are making a valuable contribution to the program, they will respect i t more which will lead to a better environment for the educational process because an atmosphere of mutual respect by students and instructors will exist. when we look at the jungle of conflicting and negative information that appears from student evaluations, some disturbing factors emerge. First, it is important to realize that opinions of students, faculty, and administrators, both documented and undocumented, differ very widely on exactly what contributes to a relevant evaluation. The areas of controversv have been discussed in this Journal (3.6)and when viewedas a whole, it is rather obvious that these difficulties arise from attempting to document the intangible. Students and instructors are people with different and valid points of view. hut evaluation forms can onlv collect reliable data about facts, not opinions. So, with such an abundance of diverse ooinions and doubts. we mav wonder whether it is ~ossihleto t k d and reu,nrd pmd teachers. Also, we ma" seriously wonder what thcot~irctivesofst~rlmtevduationarrandwhethrrthev are being met. Initiallv student evaluations were an attempt to measure teaching &rti\.eness. The concept was greete.d with enthuslissm, hut it soon hccnme &ar that it was nut suffirirnt iusr to provide documented evidence to an instructor t h a t his students did not think much of his classroom talents; the problem had to he corrected. There is no instant miracle cure for bad teaching. Before we can decide whether this ohjective is being met we must decide what an effective teacher does. Students have difficulty in expressing exactly how they react to different individuals in the classroom. I t is much easier to define what a successful instructor achieves: he stimulates the student so that the student wishes to pursue his study of the subject outside the immediate confines of the course in which he is enrolled, or put more bluntly, he makes the student work because the student wants to and not because he has to. There are many other secondary qualities a good instructor will possess which follow automaticallv if he is able to kindle enthusiasm in his sruden~s.He will make gund use of class time, he will he interested in the prnyress of his students, he will be h r l r ~ t doutside the classnmn, he will d~vio~rsly haven goc~d knowltdrt: 01 his fitM, hut he will not necessarily be well prepared. A well-prepared instructor can give a masterly performance on an overhead projector which cannot he interrupted and could he incredibly boring. He must be ahle to spontaneously reorganize his classes to suit the mood of his students. Such a teacher must possess two fundamental qualities: common sense and perception. If this person is well endowed
with the latter, then the need for student evaluation disappears. An instructor who is capable of standing in front of a class for the duration of a course without having any idea whether his students are bored, bewildered, or enthused, has no right to he in a classroom. A keen sense of perception is essential to a successful instructor and if he is so oblivious of his reception while he is teaching, then he should be in a profession that deals with inanimate objects. Very little of this contagious enthusiasm can he taught, so if an instructor receives a poor evaluation he is confronted with a dilemma. He has to improve his teaching by trying a cure that has no guarantee of success. Few people will take such a gamble with the unknown hut the ineffective instructor has no choice, so he calls upon modern educational technology to rescue him. This field is one which has reaped enormous benefits as a side effect of the use of student evaluations. A variety of teaching methods have been studied and defined in great detail. Educators are talking about what motivates a successful student in ways that have never been defined before. Teaching aids as humble as a piece of chalk or as splendid as a fully equipped modern auditorium are available. If declininn enrollments in the ohvsical sciences are to be . . halted, some i,f these experimental methods may he instrumental i n attractinc srudtmts bark into these fields. 'l'eachinr methods and course contents are being improved in the Phvsical Sciences. not onlv as a result of student evaluations, hui also because of declining enrollments. Lack of funds to operate a university provide a far more powerful incentive to improve teaching methods and course offerings than a poor student evaluation of one or two instructors who can he replaced. A more recent objective of student evaluation is to provide information that can be used to assess an instructor's nromotion and tenure prospects. This dramatic development has also oroduced some valuable renercussions. which are themselves not without problems. Many universities have sought more than one tvoe .. of instructional evaluation to serve as input for promotion and tenure committees so peer evaluation and, to a lesser extent, self-evaluation procedures have been developed. The use of more than one source of information -gives the student evaluation more value in the assessment process. In order to see what student evaluation has achieved we must look a t the atmosphere on the campuses and in the classrooms. The atrocious teacher has indeed vanished, but so also has the brilliant eccentric. Teaching faculty are becoming a rubber stamp of some stereotype image that has been created out of the mind of a computer. Students may henefit if they wish the learning process to be neatly organized into self-suided nackases where the instructor is on hand to lead them hack if they go astray. They are certainly freer than they used to be to narticioate in lectures and to ask ouestions. Thev will be exposed to &re teaching methods thanbrevious~~, but not necessarily to more good teachers. An attitude, more visible than ten years ago, is one of apparent concern by the student for his rights. A student seems
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to increasingly believe that he has the right to learn something from a course whether or not he has made any effort or contribution. No instructor can teach a phlegmatic student. Education is a two way process and a student will get about as much out of a course as he puts irito it. If he puts nothing in, he will learn nothing. Learning can only be done by the learner. There remains one auestion to which lack of time orevents an answer being m a d e . ~ a nstudent evaluations he relied upon to provide a sound ohjective evaluation of an instructor's effectiveness? This cannot be answered until 30 years from now when the student of the late sixties can truly determine the influence of his various instructors on his life. Undergraduates and graduates differ in what they expect from an instructor and graduates admit that their opinions can alter after they leave college. I realize, with some dismay, that the instructor for whom I now have the most admiration would not survive in a modern university. He lectured sitting on the bench freauentlv. disolavine odd colored socks with holes in them from beneath acid wren trnusrr legs u hirh prutrudd from d tilthy lul)-coat. He usudllv are 1 1 1 1)rf:akfait ~ durine the Iwrure, and superficially he displayed utter contemptfor undergraduRIPS. Student e ~ ~ ~ l u a t i rthrn, m s , have made the11 mark on higher educntion. Some eizht to ten sears alter their accvptanse we 4 1 1 are far from ag&ernenr on their value and mter~retation. hlan\. millions of ninn-hours and dollars h a w heen consu~ned in their design and implementation without any noticeable increase in the number of good instructors, judging by student comments. In this respkci, then, the mission hasffailed a t an enormous dollar cost to higher education. If all the time, monev. and effort had been soent directlv on ororram improvement, and the teaching ihility of these acilaiked educators had been chanelled into the classroom for the enjoyment and inspiration of students, undergraduate education would have reaped far higher benefits. The only tangible results we have from this enterprise is a plethora of evaluation forms. manv frustrated facultv. a student bodv that shows no strong feeling one way or another, and no increase in the number of effective instructors. The most encouraging result is that modern technology has failed to reduce an instructor to a number indicating his effectiveness-perhaps he is still a free spirit. Excellence in teaching has proved to he indefinable and therefore immeasurable. Have the tears, frustrations, and cost of finding this out been worthwhile? Literature Cited (11 S1ehrinz.B. R.,andSchafl,M.E..J.CHEM.ED11C.Sl. ~ i O 1. 1 9 7 4 i r c i i i i . I21 Miller. R. I.. "Evaluating Faculty Pelfi,rmnnce,"di,srryBair, Saa Frannscci. 1!172. la1 Schaff. M. E..and S i c h r i n ~R. . R . J . CHEM. R I l l K ' , 5 1 , 1% 119741 D . d CHI?M. EDIJC..SI. 15%.119idl. (41 ii)Biwkr. D.W . , a n d L e u e n % ~ ~ n . H . .CJ .H I < M . R D I ~ C . . i l .IBI.I1474i. (fil L8rsen.E.M ...I C H F M EDUC..SL, 163. II'JiJl 171 Siehnng.B.R..J.CHEM.EIlUC..S3, 176 IIYiGl. < X I O n i a e r . 1'. K...Siiilnu'. IXO. 566 119i:II.
Ccmnwll,C.
Mary G. Chisholm Behrend College of the Pennsylvania State University Erie. 16510
Volume 54. Number I , January 1977 / 23
