This paper presents a framework for utilizing Student Evaluations of Teaching (SET) in faculty evaluations. Recognizing the ongoing debate about the validity of SET as a measure of teaching effectiveness, the authors agree with scholars who propose viewing SET as a tool for gauging 'student perceptions of learning'. They present a method that…

A key responsibility of higher education providers is the accurate certification of the knowledge and skills attained by their students. However, despite an intense focus on developing relevant quality assurance regulations, academic standards in higher education have remained resistant to explication and consistent application. In this paper, we…

Sustainability has increasingly become key in universities, as the objectives of sustainable development are essential to establish policies, guidelines and indicators that guide institutions to be more sustainable. This recognition has led many authors to develop methods to assess universities based on their performance in terms of sustainable…

Many have suggested that performance grading may be a factor in the increasing number of students reporting having mental health issues, including feelings of stress. Gradeless learning has been shown to ease the pressure on students because it encourages a focus on learning rather than performance. Indeed, gradeless learning has been documented…

Evaluating the impact of Academic Literacies teaching (Lea and Street [1998. "Student Writing in Higher Education: An Academic Literacies Approach." "Studies in Higher Education" 23 (2): 157-72. doi:10.1080/03075079812331380364]) is difficult, as it involves gauging whether writers: (1) gain better understanding of what…

This article employs a new approach to understanding student transition. This area of theory and practice has developed a huge global significance. However, transition as a concept is under-theorised, and a discourse that reiterates stereotypic narratives of students' normative and linear trajectories can be seen to permeate the field. Drawing on…

The increasing prominence of neoliberal agendas in international higher education has led to greater weight being ascribed to student satisfaction, and the national surveys through which students evaluate courses of study. In this article, we focus on the evaluation of feedback processes. Rather than the transmission of information from teacher to…

Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) are an integral part of evaluating course outcomes. They are routinely used to evaluate teaching quality for the purposes of reappointment, promotion, and tenure (RPT), annual review, and the rehiring of adjunct faculty and lecturers. These evaluations are often based almost entirely on the mean or proportion…

Although teachers at many colleges and universities receive regular performance reviews (e.g. annual reviews), there are no absolute standards regarding what teaching performance in terms of teaching evaluation ratings during the review period is satisfactory. To address this issue, in this paper we propose a new two-step approach to construct…

Classroom assessment is an effective way to collect evidence about student learning, and a teacher's professional responsibility in assessment is to use high quality, fair, and ethical assessment information to make decisions about students' learning and teachers' instruction. This study used a scenario-based survey and investigated college…

This paper explores assessment experiences of undergraduates studying across disciplines. Within a participatory research design, students as researchers were involved in data collection and interpretation. The student lens is brought to bear on the experiences of academically successful final-year students and their strategies for negotiating…

In this paper, a new evaluation method for under-graduate education quality is proposed based on Artificial Intelligence Neural Network Back-Propagation (BP) algorithm and stress testing. Using this method, a publically available indicator pool is constructed, consisting of 19 variables in 4 dimensions such as Teaching Attitude, Teaching Content,…

Benchmarking is used in higher education as a means to improve and compare performance. Comparative metric benchmarks may take two forms, based on direct standardization (DS) or indirect standardization (IS). DS can be used to measure variation in performance between institutions, controlling for intrinsic differences at each institution (e.g.…

Although the high costs of implementing personnel development programs in enterprises and increasingly in universities as well are commonly accepted, the scientifically-grounded evaluation of a program's effectiveness is often neglected. The aim of this paper was to evaluate a personnel development program for academics at a German university…

Assessment in higher education with a transformational instead of a reproductive purpose can be a powerful way of supporting student learning. Since university teachers usually design their own assessments, it is important to investigate their conceptions of assessment. The current study focuses on teachers' conceptions of their current and ideal…