Work in Progress: Updating End of Semester Course Evaluations via Backwards Design to Reduce Student Bias
Year: 2024
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Many universities conduct course evaluations at the end of the semester to evaluate the quality of teaching from an instructor.These evaluations are often used for consideration of tenure, compensation, employment decisions, and teaching awards, among other career milestones.However, a variety of literature indicates that student evaluations of teaching may not be an accurate indication of teaching effectiveness [1], [2].In particular, student biases about factors such as gender, race, and age can all affect their evaluations [3]-[5].In this Work-in-progress article, we introduce a backwards design approach to re-evaluate the use and goals of course evaluations from multiple stakeholders including faculty, administrators, and students.These goals are then used to redefine the types of questions needed in course evaluation questionnaires.We also introduce a new method of writing questionnaire questions to be evidence-based (i.e., did the instructor grade assignments within a week) rather than intuition-based (i.e., did the instructor grade assignments in a timely manner) to reduce student bias.
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--41057
Institution: University of Massachusetts Lowell
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4391562993