Ever think that student evaluations of teaching are just a popularity contest?  Is your feedback looking like a bi-modal distribution–students either love you or hate you?  Are student course evaluations a waste of time because the data are worthless? Maybe it’s time you took another look at your students’ feedback in light of what the research tells us…

According to the IDEA Center Paper #50 (Benton & Cashin, 2010), misconceptions about course evaluations are common at universities like ours, misconceptions which are unsupported by research and which make faculty less willing to place value in student feedback and less likely to incorporate changes in their teaching based upon said feedback (Aleamoni, 1987; Feldman,
2007; Kulik 2001; Svinicki & McKeachie, 2011; Theall
& Franklin, 2007).

Some of the most commonly held misconceptions include:
• Students cannot make consistent judgments.
• Student ratings are just popularity contests.
• Student ratings are unreliable and invalid.
• The time of day the course is offered affects ratings.
• Students will not appreciate good teaching until they are out of college a few years.
• Students just want easy courses.• Student feedback cannot be used to help improve instruction.
• Emphasis on student ratings has led to grade inflation.

The paper goes on to point out that there is more than 50 years of “credible research on the validity and reliability of student ratings…which persist, unfortunately, largely due to ignorance of the research, personal biases, suspicion, fear, and general hostility toward any evaluation process” (Theall & Feldman, 2007).

But what about the qualitative comments students provide on the evaluations?  Faculty tell us that they most value the student comments on their evaluations, but students tell us that they don’t think their instructors value their feedback. So which is it?  Sadly, both are true.  Far too many professors dismiss the evaluations because they believe one or more of these misconceptions and students know this because they read the RateMyProfessor reviews and learn that nothing about his/hear teaching has changed in the last 10 years, regardless of what students are saying.

Want to get the best feedback from your students that will provide you with reliable data with which to make changes in your teaching?  Tell your students and show your students that their feedback matters.  I’ve even seen a professor put student evaluation comments into his syllabus.  I myself spend time at the beginning of the semester discussing the importance of feedback and how I’ve used student comments to change the course for the better, by saying something like, “This semester I’m changing the group project.  In past semesters, students told me how much they hated the group work because scheduling meetings was difficult or because some students felt they did more work than others. So this semester you’ll still be doing group projects but we’ll be doing all of our planning and preparation in Google Docs and Google Slides.  No more scheduling hassles and everyone is held accountable for their portion of the work, because I can see exactly what each person has contributed.”

All I know is that I don’t want to be one of those professors using the same lecture notes and syllabus 10 years from now.  I’m going to continue to solicit and incorporate my students’ feedback, a practice that I know will keep my courses fresh and exciting for me and my students.