Beyond Average: Contemporary statistical techniques for analysing student evaluations of teaching

Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) have been used to evaluate higher education teaching performance for decades. Reporting SET results often involves the extraction of an average for some set of course metrics, which facilitates the comparison of teaching teams across different organisational units. Here, we draw attention to ongoing problems with the naive application of this approach. Firstly, a specific average value may arise from data that demonstrates very different patterns of student satisfaction. Furthermore, the use of distance measures (e.g. an average) for ordinal data can be contested, and finally, issues of multiplicity increasingly plague approaches using hypothesis testing. It is time to advance the methodology of the field. We demonstrate how multinomial distributions and hierarchical Bayesian methods can be used to contextualise the SET scores of a course to different organisational units and student cohorts, and then show how this approach can be used to extract sensible information about how a distribution is changing.     

Understanding the perceived quality of professors’ teaching effectiveness in various disciplines: the moderating effects of teaching at top colleges

Measuring the perceived quality of professors’ teaching effectiveness is a critical issue in higher education. This study involves a large-scale data exploration with a sample of 16,802 professors, in which each professor had received at least 20 ratings from the RateMyProfessors website. We find that perceived difficulty (from the students’ perspective) has a significantly negative effect on perceived quality. However, when professors teach more difficult courses at top colleges, the decline in perceived quality is relatively small when compared to other colleges. In other words, whether professors come from top colleges has a moderating effect on the relationship between perceived quality and perceived difficulty. Furthermore, through a consideration of the characteristic differences among disciplines in terms of the relationship between perceived quality and perceived difficulty, we obtain three specific groups of disciplines. These findings facilitate a better understanding of quality for professors from different disciplines. We suggest that the measurement of teaching effectiveness should avoid the use of a single criterion because differences in courses, disciplines or schools can influence the measurement results, and these factors are beyond the control of professors.     

主观题与客观题辨议

主客观题实际上是一个连续体,"主观题客观化"和"客观题主观化"在这个连续体上向对方无限趋近,"客观题主观化"在教育考试中有借鉴意义。文章以我国高考和研究生入学考试的试卷为例,探讨了主观题与客观题比例设置问题。主观题与客观题的有机结合反映了各国考试理念的融合。题型的设计不仅与考查目标有关,还与学科特点有关,并随着认识的深入而发展。     

积极心理学研究综述

积极心理学兴起仅十余年,已经形成一股世界性的研究热潮。整体来看,积极心理学研究主要集中在三个领域:积极情绪体验、积极人格特质和积极的社会组织系统。三个领域研究的发展并不均衡。国内的研究相对比较薄弱,还缺少有国际影响力的成果,本土化的研究有待加强。目前,积极心理学在研究的科学性和研究领域方面都存在不足。尽管如此,积极心理学未来的发展前景还很广阔。     

Lecturing and other face-to-face teaching – too much or too little? An assessment based on student feedback and fail rates

Institutes of higher learning are tending to reduce the amount of face-to-face teaching that they offer, and particularly through the traditional pedagogical method of lecturing. There is ongoing debate about the educational value of lectures as a teaching approach, in terms of both whether they facilitate understanding of subject material and whether they augment the student educational experience. In this study, student evaluation of teaching scores plus academic outcome (percentage of students who fail) was assessed for 236 course units offered by a science faculty at an Australian university over the course of one year. These measures were related to the degree to which lectures and other face-to-face teaching were used in these units, controlling for factors such as class size, school and year level. An information-theoretic model selection approach was employed to identify the best models and predictors of student assessments and fail rates. All the top models of student feedback included a measure reflecting amount of face-to-face teaching, with the evaluation of quality of teaching being higher in units with higher proportions of lectures. However, these models explained only 12–20% of the variation in student evaluation scores, suggesting that many other factors come into play. By contrast, units with fewer lectures have lower failure rates. These results suggest that moving away from lectures and face-to-face teaching may not harm, and indeed may improve the number of students who pass the subject, but that this may be incurred at the expense of greater dissatisfaction in students' learning experience.     

Improving higher education practice through student evaluation systems: is the student voice being heard?

Many higher education institutions use student evaluation systems as a way of highlighting course and lecturer strengths and areas for improvement. Globally, the student voice has been increasing in volume, and capitalising on student feedback has been proposed as a means to benefit teacher professional development. This paper examines the student evaluations at a university in Trinidad and Tobago in an effort to determine whether the student voice is being heard. The research focused on students’ responses to the question, ‘How do you think this course could be improved?’ Student evaluations were gathered from five purposefully selected courses taught at the university during 2011–2012 and then again one year later, in 2012–2013. This allowed for an analysis of the selected courses. Whilst the literature suggested that student evaluation systems are a valuable aid to lecturer improvement, this research found little evidence that these evaluations actually led to any real significant changes in lecturers’ practice.     

Skills,productivity and the evaluation of teacher performance

We examine the relationships between observational ratings of teacher performance, principals’ evaluations of teachers’ cognitive and non-cognitive skills and test-score based measures of teachers’ productivity. We find that principals can distinguish between high and low performing teachers, but the overall correlation between principal ratings of teachers and teachers’ value-added contribution to student achievement is modest. The variation across metrics occurs in part because they are capturing different traits. While past teacher value-added predicts future value-added, principals’ subjective ratings can provide additional information, particularly when prior value-added measures are based on a single year of teacher performance.     

女人与城市·漂泊与寻找--王安忆小说创作二题

王安忆小说创作的叙述倾向日益明显 ,写作技巧也日臻成熟。王安忆小说创作中的一个母题是女人为生存和生活而进行的努力 ,本文中“女人与城市”部分就这一母题进行了讨论 ,并试图对其小说创作中的客观叙述加以分析。“漂泊与寻找”部分则从王安忆的自我意识出发 ,发现其小说创作中的漂泊与寻找的基调 ,同时对其中的主观叙述加以研究。     

Epilepsy in Children with ASD: An Overview of Evaluation Procedures,Child Characteristics and Treatment Options

The rates of epilepsy among children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are higher than that of the general population. The exact prevalence and aetiology of the comorbidity of autism and epilepsy are not well understood; however, the connection is well-documented. This common comorbidity makes the treatment of epilepsy increasingly complex for children with ASD. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the relevant literature for individuals with epilepsy with a particular focus on individuals with both ASD and epilepsy according to the following framework: (a) evaluation procedures, (b) child characteristics and outcomes and (c) treatment options. Thirty articles met specific inclusion criteria. Several treatment options for epilepsy in children with ASD were uncovered, including medications, vagus nerve stimulation and surgery. Still, more research is needed to identify comprehensive treatments that have been empirically proven to be successful for children with ASD.     

Rate my attitude: research agendas and RateMyProfessor scores

The literature on student evaluations of teaching (SETs) generally presents two opposing camps: those who believe in the validity and usefulness of SETs, and those who do not. Some researchers have suggested that ‘SET deniers’ resist SETs because of their own poor SET results. To test this hypothesis, I analysed essays by 230 SET researchers (170 lead authors) and classified the researchers as having negative, neutral or positive attitudes towards SETs. I retrieved their RateMyProfessors.com (RMP) scores and, using logistic regression, found that lead authors with negative attitudes towards SETs were 14 times more likely to score below an estimated RMP average than lead authors with positive attitudes towards SETs. Co-authors and researchers with neutral attitudes, on the other hand, did not significantly differ from the RMP average. These results suggest that personal attitudes towards SETs may drive research findings.