Faculty
concerned over evaluations
By
Paul DeCarlo
On-line Forty-Niner
Wayne
Dick remembers his undergraduate years at
the University of California at San Diego
when students would jot down comments about
professors in a large book atop a tree stump.
One comment would be a colorful tirade of
a certain professor's unsavory qualities
while another might actually provide a detailed
account of why a professor failed or succeeded
in enlightening young minds.
Albeit
archaic and labor intensive, the idea stuck
and after a Sept. 27, 1978 meeting of the
Board of Trustees of the California State
University system, all campuses were to
establish a program of student evaluations
of teaching by the 1979-80 academic year.
As Academic Senate chairman and computer
science professor at Cal State Long Beach,
Dick now oversees the committee responsible
for determining the validity of these assessments,
and how both professors and students are
reacting to the process in place.
"We've
been through about three iterations of evaluation
forms," Dick said. "None of them
have been designed experimentally, or have
really been tested for whether the questions
reliably measure anything."
The committee has been reviewing a form
from Kansas State University, called the
IDEA form, a more in-depth learning tool
that outdoes the eight-question form (five
extra questions may be added upon request
from an instructor) now in use at The Beach.
Implementing the IDEA form is very expensive,
because the results must be sent to Kansas
to be tallied.
Dick
cited two methods of teacher evaluations
the current form is vague in assessing.
He described a formative evaluation, one
that helps professors identify shortcomings
and strengths to improve a course, while
a summative evaluation is a final judgment,
taken into consideration when faculty are
up for promotion.
"It
just doesn't give a professor any indication
of how to improve," Dick said of the
form's lack of depth regarding specific
information. "You'd really have to
ask a few more questions."
The
deciding factor for whether or not a lecturer
stays on at CSULB is ultimately left up
to the evaluations handed out near the end
of each course. With the current California
budget predicament and the reality of California
State University staff reductions soon approaching,
heightened sensitivity and concern for accurate
evaluations is a controversial issue.
"It's
still an open question where we go with
this," said Mark Wiley, director at
the faculty center for professional development,
"but the current form certainly is
not adequate. I think most faculty would
agree with that."
With 1,800 active faculty here at CSULB,
the reviewing process, particularly of subjective
narrative responses directed at professors
on the back of the form, is hard to evaluate
with respect to time. Written responses
are not quantifiable, meaning they cannot
be translated into a number.
"The
problem with evaluations is if that's the
only thing we're doing to judge teaching
effectiveness," Wiley said, "it's
not a good thing. We need more things in
place."
Peer evaluations, or faculty observing faculty,
are used in some departments at CSULB, and
Wiley also specified that syllabi, assignments
and exams all must be discussed "in
a way that shows development."
Among faculty members, mixed views are expressed
regarding the current evaluation form.
"I've
always been a big fan of student evaluations,"
said Craig Smith, interim chairman for the
department of film and electronic arts and
professor of communication studies. However,
Smith noted that CSULB needs to give appropriate
evaluations based on course content.
"It's
not fair to use the same form for a mass
lecture that you use for a biology lab,"
Smith said. "Our tool is primitive
in that regard."
John
C. Snidecor, undergraduate adviser in the
department of art, called the evaluations,
"very effective."
"I
had my own review forms years before the
university had the forms," Snidecor
said, "just because I wanted to know
how I was functioning. I think it's a very
useful tool in figuring out what's been
going on in the classroom."
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