Student Rating and Research Literature

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

Student Ratings and Research Literature

Wilbert J. McKeachie, a renowned educational scholar from University of Michigan, tells the following story¹:

Some years ago I was a member of a committee administering grants to senior faculty members who proposed to construct or modify their courses to emphasize critical thinking. At an end-of-the-year dinner for the participants, the discussion turned to student ratings, and the usual criticisms were raised.

" Students don't really appreciate a good course until they are out of college."
" Students can't really judge how well they are learning."
" Students only give high ratings to courses with low standards."

It happened that Herb Marsh, a professor at the University of Western Sydney, [and creator of the SEEQ] was visiting me at the time, and I had invited him to be my guest at the dinner. He is probably the world's leading researcher on student ratings of teaching, and as a guest he kept quiet as long as he could. But finally he could stand it no longer and said, "You know, there's a good deal of research evidence on the
issues you've raised."

A prominent historian immediately retorted," We don't care about research evidence; we have our own experience."

So what does the research literature say? In a recent survey of the student ratings research, James Kulik (Director and Research Scientist for the Office of Evaluations and Examinations at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor) concludes²:

If anything, the trend seems to be toward an increasing use of student ratings in higher education. Given the ubiquity and longevity of ratings systems, we should be grateful that a research base exists from which we can draw conclusions about the validity and utility of ratings.

What do the research studies show? First, that student ratings agree well with other measures of teaching effectiveness: learning measures, student comments, expert observations, and alumni ratings. The correlation between student ratings and examination scores and between ratings and classroom observations is high. Second, research studies also show how useful ratings can be to teachers. The studies show
that teachers profit from the information the ratings provide. They profit from ratings alone, and they profit even more from ratings accompanied by instructional consultation. Ratings alone raise teaching effectiveness scores a little. Ratings plus consultation raise effectiveness more.

1 - McKeachie, Wilbert J. (1996). Student Ratings of Teaching. In The Professional Evaluation of Teaching: American Council of Learned Societies. Occasional Paper No. 33.

2 - Kulik, James A. (2001). Student Ratings: Validity, Utility, and Controversy. In Theall, Abrami, and Mets (eds). New Directions for Institutional Research, Number 109.