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From: Beckie Supiano
Subject: Teaching: Do students evaluate their courses too early?
This week, I:
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This week, I:
My colleague Jack Stripling interviewed me about student course evaluations for the latest episode of College Matters, The Chronicle’s podcast, which he hosts. You can listen to it on Apple or Spotify.
Our conversation dove into some of the big problems with using course evaluations, which have a limited relationship with learning and contain students’ implicit biases, as the main or only way to evaluate teaching, as many colleges continue to do. In our pages over the years, we’ve covered the research on course evaluations and colleges’ efforts to evaluate teaching more holistically. Beth wrote a good story on the lay of the land here, and then published a set of readers’ responses describing their own experience with course evaluations — with the memorable title “A Culture of Fear and of Pandering” — that Jack drew on for the episode.
While I find this topic frustrating, in that the problems seem clear but rarely acted on, it was fun to try to explain it for a broader audience. And it gave me a chance to consider the issue with fresh eyes.
One thing the interview got me thinking about was timing. Students fill out their evaluations near the end of the term, before receiving their final grades. There’s some logic to this:Students aren’t simply reacting to the final grade and would surely be even less likely to evaluate a course later on. But even though students might forget some of the specifics of a course if more time elapsed, I think they’d be better positioned to describe whether or not it had provided good preparation for what they did next. As I told Jack, this job makes me think about my own education a lot, and one thing I’ve considered is that the classes I liked best while taking them were not necessarily the ones in which I learned the most. But I didn’t know that until much later.
Another way in which student course evaluations might happen too soon has to do with professors’ efforts to improve instruction. As Jack and I discussed, just knowing that getting high scores from students matters professionally could be enough to dissuade an instructor from trying a new approach, like active learning, that is evidence-based but often disliked by students. Also, trying something new doesn’t always work out on the first go-round. A professor trying to advance might decide that’s one more reason to wait.
Indeed, Beth and I have noticed anecdotally that one group of readers we hear from a lot is late-career faculty members who have more time and security to change their teaching because they’re tenured and perhaps full professors. By the time they reach this point, of course, professors have taught many students. Certainly, one would expect professors to become better teachers over time. But a better system, perhaps, would reward them for investing in their teaching sooner, rather than making it a project some take up once they’re no longer worried about being punished for it.
You might want to check out some other teaching-related episodes of the podcast, on reading, cheating, and grades.
Recently, I shared some observations from Robert Talbert on how instructors can help students “become experts at practicing” and asked readers to share their strategies. This week, I’m sharing two responses that both touch on martial arts:
Lendol Calder, a professor of history at Augustana College, writes:
“I agree with Robert Talbert when he says that good teachers create opportunities for students to become ‘experts at practicing.’ Also like Talbert, I came to this conclusion while watching a coach teach his sport: My daughter’s taekwondo sensei was a master at motivating students to perform the complex ‘moves’ that make up taekwondo’s ‘forms.’ Ever since, I no longer walk to class thinking, ‘What will I say today?’ Instead, I now go to class thinking, ‘What will I have them do today?’
“In my introductory history courses, I teach students six heuristics of historical thinking. These heuristics, or mental habits employed by experts to solve problems, are rolled out one at a time across the units of the course. In class, students practice the heuristics on various exercises and historical problems (I call them ‘History Gym Workouts’). Assignments and activities are frequent, for the sake of feedback, but low-stakes, so that the emphasis is on mastery and not stressing out about high-stakes tests. By the end of the course, I expect students to be able to apply all six habits of historical thinking to solve historical problems.”
Katelyn R. Carney, a lecturer at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, writes:
“I do agree with Talbert’s belief that teaching is about helping students learn to be experts at practicing. While I think, on some level, this has always been functionally present in higher education (thinking of labs in science courses, for example), if the teacher is aware and intentional about designing their course around the idea of ‘learning as practice,’ it becomes more powerful for the learner.
“What first came to mind in answer to your question was with regards to a new course I taught this year for veterinary medical (graduate) students. The course was on ‘Human Flourishing,’ and it was designed as an experiential and scholarly approach to learning about flourishing. We used a mental-health app called Healthy Minds (the version designed for higher ed) to explore and practice concepts related to flourishing.
“The ‘practice sessions’ were really meditations, something that most students did not have any familiarity with before starting the course. That was the bulk of their homework — three mini podcast-style lessons a week on the scholarly theory plus three practice sessions, all through the app — each week. And while, at the end of the course, most students reported finding the app helpful, I do think that some of the most important work was done in our synchronous group-processing sessions. In circle dialogues, we talked about what went well, what was challenging, what they were intrigued by, what surprised them, etc.
“It was a chance for me and their peers to affirm the experience of learning a new skill (and, as you say, the slog it can feel like!) and connect that skill with greater meaning and purpose. It was also an opportunity to shine a light on how fulfilling that learning ended up being, as many students reported noticing change in themselves over the eight-week course.
“One of my hobbies is martial arts, and much like Talbert describes, I think investing so much of myself in something that involves much practice and constant learning of new skills, katas, etc., makes me a better teacher. It is good for us educators to actively remember how learning feels all along the spectrum of the experience!”
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com or beckie.supiano@chronicle.com.
—Beckie
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