What is the college’s priority, learning or making things easy and convenient? When it comes to parking, I have no problem eliminating faculty parking spaces, but when it comes to the goal of the college, learning should come first. It seems from student comments in my classes that counseling / advising as standard procedure uses Ratemyprofessor.com (RMP) to place students with a professor according to easiness. Also, while the chili pepper denoting sexual attractiveness has not yet been mentioned by a student in my class as a topic in school counselling sessions, it is a signature feature of RMP and that information is shared with students by the active intervention of counseling. But student evaluations are important. Right?
“Students Don’t Know what’s Best for Their Learning” writes Arthur Poropat, of Griffith University, in a well researched and documented online article. He cites 2 recent studies that show that making decisions based on student evaluations in a customer is always right mentality, may be the worst way to evaluate quality teaching and learning. Evaluations correlate with grades, but NOT with learning, and repeated studies as well as faculty intuition bear this out. Easiness therefore correlates with good student evaluations, but more challenging instructors or courses correlate with success in subsequent college work.
Part of the reason for this apparently counter-intuitive relationship, is that
Students often assume learning depends on how smart they are and downplay the value of hard work. Despite this, …research has shown that when compared with intelligence, effort and curiosity have as big or bigger an effect on learning outcomes.
A belief in ability or talent over a focus on effort or work leads students to make bad decisions regarding their education. Effort correlates with success, where the assumption snowflake-like uniqueness and talent does not. Poropat cites sources for this – though most teachers will feel he’s preaching to the choir. What does this mean? He advises:
Students should also pay less attention to student evaluations when choosing a university course — happy students may not be learning….Governments that use student evaluations to assess universities are likely to be misled, potentially resulting in reduced funding for precisely the courses that contribute most to student ability and their later contributions to the economy.
Likewise, universities that rely on student evaluations are likely to punish good teachers and encourage those who simply make it easy for students.
This has direct effect on our school. Students in all of my classes have told me that counselors are using RMP to advise students what class to take. One student in my comp 1 class just told me 2 different counselors have used RMP in front of him and showed the student the results.
Poropats article didn’t break new ground.
In the spirit of reification and the cognitive disequilibrium that comes with learning – an article from NPR found that measuring student performance based on performance on subsequent classes shows student evaluations of prof. performance don’t correlate with with student performance. What concerns me, to quote this article, is ” that course evaluations may in fact measure, and thus motivate, the opposite of good teaching.”
This situation creates pressure to make classes easier – but who or what is driving this pressure? I like to think community colleges offer an education as good or better than KU. If we focus effort on making things easier, can I continue to think that? Also, if we rely on a website that features “hotness” as a criteria, do I need to up the sex appeal of my wardrobe? Should faculty do a swimsuit calendar to sell in the bookstore? Shouldn’t the college subsidize my wardrobe?
