DETERMINING THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE IDEAL PROFESSOR: AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH

In a recently conducted study it was found that an effective college teacher could be characterized chiefly in terms of "research,""teaching," and "service to the university." The present experiment corroborated these findings using a relatively unknown approach to data collection, analysis, and interpretation. A free-response method of data collection, in conjunction with nonmetric multidimensional scaling, produced results highly similar to those of the previous study. In addition, the solution permitted a straight-forward means of assessing the performance of individual faculty members.     

A Response to the Emperor's New Clothes

In reply to Alschuler's commentary on their original article, the authors argue that portfolios are reliable, valid means for assessing students' progress and for program evaluation.