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SUMMARY NOTES ON "WHAT DO THEY KNOW, ANYWAY?" BY RICHARD
M. FELDER, CHEMICAL ENGINEERING EDUCATION, 26(3), PP. 134-135
(SUMMER 1992). (http://www2.ncsu.edu/effective_teaching/
click on "Random Thoughts").
Summarized by J. T. P. Yao (5/17/99)
"High correlation exist between course-end ratings and ratings
by those who presumably have the required wisdom and experience
– peers (one reference), administrators (one reference), alumni
(three references), and graduating seniors (two references). If
professors in your department who know how you teach rated your
effectiveness, the results would probably not differ all that much
from your student ratings. …"
"Teachers who assign more work and more difficult work tend
to be rated as most effective (three references). Some studies show
no effect of grading practices on overall student ratings (two references),
others find tendencies for teachers giving higher grades to get
higher ratings. The latter result does not invalidate the ratings,
however, … (one of the two references mentioned earlier)."
"Comparisons have been run on student ratings collected in
three different ways: objective questionnaire items, written responses
to open-ended questions, and group interviews. The average correlation
among the rating methods was 0.86 (one reference)."
"Teachers rated as effective by students tend to be those
whose students perform best on achievement tests (one reference).
Classes in which students give instructors higher ratings when multiple
sections are taught tend to be those in which the students score
higher on common external exams (one reference). Good teaching also
motivates interest and desire to learn; students in courses taught
by highly-rated teachers are subsequently more likely to elect advanced
courses in the same subjects (one reference) and to major in those
subjects (one reference)."
"Students of instructors who got student feedback scored higher
on achievement tests and assessments of motivation for learning
than students of instructors who got no feedback (one reference)."
"In short, the research shows that students evaluations of
an instructor provide a reliable, valid assessment of that instructor’s
teaching effectiveness, especially if they reflect the views of
many students in several different course offerings. …"
[The paper has 16 references attached at the end (please see the
original paper on the Internet). It also mentioned that there are
1300 to 2000 articles and books dealing with research on the subject.
Rich Felder is a well-known professor of chemical engineering at
the North Carolina State University. He and his wife Rebecca Brent
have written many papers and conducted effective teaching institutes
in engineering education.]
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