Are online student ratings the "wave of the future"? This chapter introduces numerous advantages and challenges of adopting an online system for student evaluation of teaching; in it, the authors preview the research of the other authors of this volume and suggest areas that universities can investigate when determining the desirability of…

Student ratings reflect the variety and range of teacher behaviors and the instructional successes and failures. Although researchers, practitioners, and users of rating systems acknowledge their multidimensionality, it is not fully used. Understanding the context of evaluations and identifying how intended uses and audiences affect data…

There is steadily accumulating evidence of the misuse or overuse of ratings data, but this does not invalidate their usefulness. The research literature has been concerned almost exclusively with the construction of ratings instruments. There has been little systematic study about creating evaluation systems that truly respond to the needs of…

Many U.S. institutions of higher education are initiating and expanding the use of the Internet for collecting and reporting student ratings of instruction. The primary objective of this study was to better understand the effects of the Internet on student ratings of instruction in higher education. More specifically, data were collected to…

With the introduction of online course surveys comes the related issue of reporting survey results. This article is based on the experiences of Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta (Georgia Tech), a large, Doctoral/Research-Extensive institution where all end-of-term course surveys have been online since the fall semester of 1999. This…

An annotated bibliography on instructional evaluation and improvement is presented. The bibliography was compiled with an explicit bias toward the inclusion of articles that applied methodological techniques that are relatively uncommon in the instructional literature. (MLW)

Evaluation alone will probably not improve teaching, but, when it is accompanied by feedback, information about teaching and learning, and work with a knowledgeable consultant, evaluation may lead to improvement. An experienced consultant can foster trust, offer encouragement, and provide guided practice to help faculty improve their teaching…

Six evaluation methods are discussed: student ratings, colleague evaluations, definitions of good teaching, teacher-designed examinations, evaluation of research and scholarship, and the politics of evaluation. (Author/MLW)

Research on college teaching supports classifying teaching as much an art as a science. The expectation that student evaluation of teachers can result in exact teacher rankings is unrealistic and stifles the artistry in teaching. However, current evaluation techniques can yield broader classifications of effectiveness and help improve instruction.…

A decade of interest in the evaluation of college teaching has produced both a wide variety of approaches and a concise set of practical guidelines for assisting college teachers in improving instruction. (Authors/MSE)

This study compares mean ratings, inter-rater reliabilities, and the factor structure of items for online and paper student-rating forms from the University of Washington's Instructional Assessment System. (Contains 3 figures and 2 tables.)