TEACHING & LEARNING: SEEKING USEFUL FEEDBACK FROM STUDENTS

Seeking Student Comments: Why
Bother?
by Eileen Herteis

What is SEEQ?

Student Ratings and Research Literature

An Abbreviated History . . .

SEEQ and You
by Toni Roberts

Why bother? Acquiring feedback on your teaching can help you . . .

SEEQ Form in PDF - Short

SEEQ Form in PDF - Long

Seeking Student Comments: Why Bother?
Eileen Herteis, PCTC

Is there a direct, causal link between measurement and improvement? The same
impulse that drives the overweight to their bathroom scales seduces some universities into believing that, by developing ever more elaborate means of evaluation and mandating their use, we will improve teaching.

Many of you know that I worked at University of Saskatchewan before coming to the
Maritimes, and any rancher on the Prairies will tell you that you don’t fatten cattle by weighing them! No more can you can improve teaching simply by assessing it. Many scholars (Seldin, 1999; Braskamp, Ory & Brandenberg, 1984; Cross & Angelo, 1993) insist that evaluation leads to improvement only when it reveals something new to the instructor; when the instructor is motivated to improve; when the instructor knows how to improve.

To this excellent list, I would add my own condition: that evaluation leads to improvement when the instructor and the students have confidence in the form and the process. Clearly, forms that are poorly designed and implemented will not lead to teaching enhancement. Forms that ask students to comment on or rate items beyond their scope— for example, asking first year students to comment on the currency or mastery of the professor’s content knowledge—are unreliable. Feedback that is not presented in a useable format for the professor is unlikely to be heeded.

The SEEQ form has been extensively tested and used in more than 50,000 courses with over one million students at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. It is a valid and reliable way to collect student ratings of instruction that can lead to improvement.

An important note should be made here: The Purdy Crawford Teaching Centre is not
involved in the summative evaluation of teaching: that is, evaluation done for personnel
reasons, such as promotion and tenure decisions. PCTC’s domain is formative: helping professors who wish to seek confidential feedback that will lead to teaching enhancement.

Perhaps the most pernicious example of teaching assessment without reliability and validity, indeed assessment devoid of integrity, is “ ratemyprofessors.ca,” a treacherous, tabloid travesty that allows students, anonymously and with impunity, to call professors “arrogant” or “ the worst I ever had.” Of course, there are some—adoring yet unable to spell, bless them—who describe their professor as “a goddess” or“ a genious.”

How unreliable is this site? Well, going back to University of Saskatchewan, some of you may have read the recent reports of a faculty member dismissed from the university because of the comments he posted about his colleagues!

Sites like “ratemyprofessors” are doubly distasteful because they perpetuate the prevalent and dangerous view that students are consumers or ‘clients’ of education rather than partners in it. Blaming a teacher alone for my poor performance is as logical as blaming my priest because I didn’t get into Heaven.

Let me go back to my original question: Why bother? Because a well-designed ratings form, like SEEQ, asks objective questions about important aspects of teaching, not just the easiness of a class. Because a well-designed form gathers information that leads to teaching enhancement—and whether we like it or not, whether we have been teaching for four years or forty, our students’ comments matter to us! See Why bother? Acquiring feedback on your teaching can help you for even more reasons to seek student feedback.