Student evaluations of teaching

It appears to me that over recent years there's been an increasing emphasis on student evaluations of teaching. Indeed, some universities seem to be self-congratulatory about having made them mandatory. The evidence, however, appears to demonstrate that there are gaping holes in this quality-assurance boat.

In her, Bias, the Brain, and Student Evaluations of Teaching, Deborah J. Merritt advises that,

...many professors report that reliance on these measures—particularly on isolated numerical averages—is growing in tenure, promotion, salary, and other decisions. The academy has been particularly silent in response to questions about racial bias in conventional teaching evaluations. Few articles engage the eloquent critiques that individual minority professors have raised, and schools do not seem to have examined their practices in response to these concerns.

That message is paralleled in Daniel Hamermesh and Amy Parker's, Beauty in the Classroom: Professors’ Pulchritude and Putative Pedagogical Productivity. They observe that,

Regardless of the evidence and of beliefs about this issue, however, instructional ratings are part of what universities use in their evaluations of faculty performance—in setting salaries, in determining promotion, and in awarding special recognition, such as teaching awards. Thus even if instructional ratings have little or nothing to do with actual teaching productivity, university administrators behave as if they believe that they do, and they link economic rewards to them.

So if student evaluations are often unreliable and quite possibly discriminatory—and administrators know it—perhaps the accountability focus has been far too narrow.

Most of what we call management consists of
making it difficult for people to get their work done.
—Peter Drucker (1909-2005)

Contemporaneous notes

Notes from a meeting can be strong evidence. Subsequent judgements about the weight to be afforded such notes, however, will be based on the answers to (at least) three questions:

Who made the notes? It's best if the notes were taken by a note taker with no personal interest in the matter at hand. If you find yourself in a meeting that would benefit from such assistance, ask for the meeting to be rescheduled so that you can enlist that help. And then, if it's not already apparent that notes are being taken, say something like, "Jane will be taking notes."

When (and where) were the notes made? Contemporaneous notes — notes made at the time and place — are far better than notes made subsequently based on recollection.

What kind of evidence do the notes provide? Notes that say, "Joe Bloggs spoke in disparaging terms," are not nearly as useful as notes citing the actual words, for example: "Joe Bloggs said to Henry, "You're useless and your work is pathetic.'"

If getting down the actual words means saying, "Excuse me, I just need a moment to make a note," then ask for that time.

England's East Sussex Council has a useful one-page document (PDF) about contemporaneous notes (albeit for matters that might end up in court). Allow me to paraphrase (and adjust) that advice:

Keep it factual
Write in ink, at the time
Record the date, time and participants
(and the name of the note taker)
Keep the original
No erasures
Nothing torn out
No blank spaces
No overwriting
No writing between lines
No separate sheets
Amendments to be initialled

William Camden said, 'The early bird catches the worm.'
Well, the worm was up early
and it didn't do him any good.
It's less about whether you're early or late,
and more about whether you're the bird or the worm.
—Yllib Ybnad (b. 1948)