Classroom observation instruments are not used all that regularly in higher education, but when they are, the focus tends to be on high-level abstractions (“The teacher was organized.”) or aggregated behaviors (“The teacher treated students with respect.”). Items like these are appropriate, but they do
“Even measures with perfect validity can be rendered useless if they are interpreted incorrectly, and anecdotal evidence suggests that teaching evaluations are frequently the subject of unwarranted interpretations based on assumed levels of precision that they do not possess.” (p. 641) And now there’s some
Whatever philosophical and empirical issues college teachers may have with the Rate My Professor (RMP) website, there is no denying that the site in now a huge repository of information on college teachers. The website reports that it contains 15 million ratings for 1.4 million
If you’re looking for a way to improve your teaching, consider teaching squares. A teaching square consists of four faculty from different disciplines who visit each other’s classes within a two-to-three-week period. After the classroom visits, the four gather around coffee or a meal to
Five faculty, all belonging to the same interdisciplinary sociology department, decided that collectively they could improve student writing skills better than they could individually. “Our approach emphasizes that a collective effort need not be a department-wide, institutionalized one. Indeed, faculty can still collaborate and students
A thoroughly referenced article seeks to answer why science faculty members are slow to adopt evidence-based teaching practices, despite what the authors describe as “heroic dissemination” of information on these practices. The folks on the science side of the house have evidence that use of
When student ratings first started being widely used and the research associated with them was prolific, many faculty objected to the focus on teaching effectiveness. “It shouldn’t be about me! I’m a good teacher if my students are learning. Measure how much my students have
This article explains areas that instructors need to work on in order to be successful: knowledge base of teaching and learning, underprepared students, instructional management, teaching strategies, assessment, and passion.
How much instructional advice have you heard over the years? How often when you talk about an instructional issue are you given advice, whether you ask for it or not? Let’s say you’re a new teacher or you’re teaching a class you haven’t taught before
When we talk about teaching effectiveness, it’s usually in the context of evaluation. Student ratings are frequently described as measures of teaching effectiveness, and that makes our understanding of the term important. Researcher Leslie Layne wondered whether students and teachers define the term similarly. If
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