I am not familiar with the student evaluations described in the article but I do know that UK faculty tend to be hostile to such evaluations - many would not allow a colleague to sit in their classes and hear the content of their lectures. I have long supported the practice of student evaluations and for using them to determine minimum standards of competency. We use a scale of 1-7 (awful to excellent) and faculty must score 5.5 and above, with a norm of 6.0+ expected across the class, to remain on our teaching staff (with provision made to improve over the next two classes). As we do not use assignments written off site and out of sight there is no prospect of student pressure to slacken standards and as our exams are sat by all students around the world there is no prospect of grade inflation for our on campus students. The evaluation system works well. Other faculty are able to sit in any class or series of classes that they like and in my experience faculty welcome colleagues to attend. You get the odd ball who maliciously down marks a member of faculty but across a class these tend to stand out and they can be sympathetically interviewed for details. Where the "odd balls" number 10 per cent or more, something generally is wrong and is investigated. In 12 years I have not noticed any problems with canvassing student opinions, most of whom are adults and mature enough to give candid assessments.
What you describe sounds a reasonable approach, Professor. I like the idea of student evaluations as one component of teacher assessment. Do I have it right that that resident students but not DL students give evaluations?
Yes, the evaluations are of the faculty on campus and not the DL students (though that is not precluded if we could devise a way of doing this meaningfully). Of ocurse, as we teach on campus in short bursts (3 days twice for core course; 3 days once for electives) some proportion of the classes consist of DL students who take occasional classes (by choice) on campus where the majority are either fulltime or part time. It is classroom (and in between) performance the students are evaluating and how it helps them learn. We run regular evaluations of the materials, school support, faculty contact, and such like to the wider DL body but this is not so personal as you can do with people on campus who can fit face and performance to individuals. These data are analysed carefully, plus incidental data arriving at the school and those we pick up from reading the independent student website, Watercooler. Student evaluations are treated seriously, including looking closely at the extremes (the worst and best assessments) as well as the trends, over time, and overall scores. Faculty, like all staff, are also in a Performance Management system that evaluates their other duties. To equalise the status for employment purposes, we voluntarily gave up tenure and new staff are not offered it. All staff and faculty are on the same conditions of employment (better in detail than enjoyed by most UK universities). Put together these systems lead to higher performance from everybody (there are occasional blips, of course!) than experienced elsewhere. Students know their evaluations are treated seriously and they know that 'soft' exam regimes are not practised, hence there is no point manipulating behaviour to get better grades, nor is there grade inflation. They sit the same exams as everybody else; we have not noticed wildy different performances between on campus and off campus students. On the basis of exam results you could not predict to which population a student belonged, though, of course, the populations are not equal in number.
