Comments for O Teaching Matters http://tlc.otis.edu/blogs/teachingmatters Otis College of Art and Design Mon, 08 Sep 2008 09:52:04 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=wordpress-mu-1.2.1 Comment on Pedagogy Visited–Exactly What Is Teaching Excellence? (Part A) by rlavender http://tlc.otis.edu/blogs/teachingmatters/2007/10/18/pedagogy-visited%e2%80%93exactly-what-is-teaching-excellence/#comment-36 rlavender Sat, 20 Oct 2007 01:47:05 +0000 http://tlc.otis.edu/blogs/teachingmatters/2007/10/18/pedagogy-visited%e2%80%93exactly-what-is-teaching-excellence/#comment-36 Debra's comments would be a good basis for a larger essay--thanks! I agree that student evaluations of teaching can reflect accurately, compared to some measures, on actual quality of teaching. My experience, both as a victim of them and a user, so-to-speak, of them, is that good teaching is recognized by most students, but since reading about the virtual straight-line correlation between student locus of control and their tendencies to evaluate accordingly, I've grown quite suspicious about the evaluations' validity. For example, consider a class consisting of 10% (less than our Foundation class, as a whole, this year) "externals," or students who believe that what controls their academic successes and failures lies wholly outside of themselves, and cannot be controlled by them or their actions. As numerous large studies have shown, such students will almost always rate teachers harshly, which would mean that even a great teacher, when rated by those students, will appear weak. If such factors as invisible student psychological states are well known to correlate to poor student evals, regardless of teaching quality, the whole enterprise of student evaluation could be deeply flawed. My suggestion: weight them appropriately within the context of a multi-faceted rank and promotion policy such as ours at Otis, which values several primary aspects of faculty success, and allows department-specific weightings for each. I think we should jointly write a new essay on the topic of teaching methodology that can serve as a daytime version of Lunesta . . . . Debra’s comments would be a good basis for a larger essay–thanks! I agree that student evaluations of teaching can reflect accurately, compared to some measures, on actual quality of teaching. My experience, both as a victim of them and a user, so-to-speak, of them, is that good teaching is recognized by most students, but since reading about the virtual straight-line correlation between student locus of control and their tendencies to evaluate accordingly, I’ve grown quite suspicious about the evaluations’ validity. For example, consider a class consisting of 10% (less than our Foundation class, as a whole, this year) “externals,” or students who believe that what controls their academic successes and failures lies wholly outside of themselves, and cannot be controlled by them or their actions. As numerous large studies have shown, such students will almost always rate teachers harshly, which would mean that even a great teacher, when rated by those students, will appear weak. If such factors as invisible student psychological states are well known to correlate to poor student evals, regardless of teaching quality, the whole enterprise of student evaluation could be deeply flawed. My suggestion: weight them appropriately within the context of a multi-faceted rank and promotion policy such as ours at Otis, which values several primary aspects of faculty success, and allows department-specific weightings for each.

I think we should jointly write a new essay on the topic of teaching methodology that can serve as a daytime version of Lunesta . . . .

]]> Comment on Pedagogy Visited–Exactly What Is Teaching Excellence? (Part A) by Debra Ballard http://tlc.otis.edu/blogs/teachingmatters/2007/10/18/pedagogy-visited%e2%80%93exactly-what-is-teaching-excellence/#comment-35 Debra Ballard Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:28:26 +0000 http://tlc.otis.edu/blogs/teachingmatters/2007/10/18/pedagogy-visited%e2%80%93exactly-what-is-teaching-excellence/#comment-35 Since I spend a good deal of time thinking about my own teaching (a reflective practitioner), your comments really resonated. One thing that close friends know and casual acquaintances learn is that the often heard comment, “how great is it to be faculty, you just stand there and talk, have short hours, and the summers off” sends me into an extended rant about prepping, countless hours grading, learning new technology, reading about learning research, etc. (Not surprisingly, few people ever say that to me twice.) Content expertise is never itself a condition to teach (or in some cases, inflict). Once or twice (that’s all I’ll admit to) I’ve hired faculty with impeccable and impressive CV’s only to discover they were a daytime form of Lunesta for our students (though we know they need the sleep). Interestingly when I had suggestions for the comatose inducing faculty, they blamed the students' attention spans and and inability to recognize greatness, failing to recognize the fact that even I was starting to doze and I really cared about the conversation. Though I always have seem unease when I do my own student evaluations (I don’t think any non masochist enjoys being evaluated), the reading I have done on evaluations is that if the instrument is good, the results are usually fairly reliable. Research has shown that students are generally more generous than a colleague or administrator doing the same evaluation. During my years as a chair, I’ve found the complaints fall into three categories: unfair, boring, and too easy. The latter initially was a surprise to me; it is generally in commodified terms like “too easy for the money I pay to go to this school.” Curiously, the positive comments (which far surpass the negative) are less specific and articulate and the most popular are “s/he is cool,” “s/he rocks,” and “s/he is the greatest teacher in the known universe and you should give him/her a really big raise.” After completing a writing class I taught, one student said I was “grate” and I really didn’t know how to take it. Several years ago I attended a conference where Derek Bok, the former president of Harvard, was talking about his book Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should be Learning More (for you sticklers, I forgot how to do italics in a blog and the last time I tried I lost the entire thing so now I’m italics shy). A good deal of his address was that the professoriate (yes even those at Harvard) must become more informed about teaching pedagogy. The content part was a given, but if we spend a good amount of our careers teaching, then we should treat teaching and learning with the same seriousness and scholarship, especially given the explosion of recent cognitive research and data not available twenty years ago. It’s a book I highly recommend. Since I spend a good deal of time thinking about my own teaching (a reflective practitioner), your comments really resonated. One thing that close friends know and casual acquaintances learn is that the often heard comment, “how great is it to be faculty, you just stand there and talk, have short hours, and the summers off” sends me into an extended rant about prepping, countless hours grading, learning new technology, reading about learning research, etc. (Not surprisingly, few people ever say that to me twice.)

Content expertise is never itself a condition to teach (or in some cases, inflict). Once or twice (that’s all I’ll admit to) I’ve hired faculty with impeccable and impressive CV’s only to discover they were a daytime form of Lunesta for our students (though we know they need the sleep). Interestingly when I had suggestions for the comatose inducing faculty, they blamed the students’ attention spans and and inability to recognize greatness, failing to recognize the fact that even I was starting to doze and I really cared about the conversation.

Though I always have seem unease when I do my own student evaluations (I don’t think any non masochist enjoys being evaluated), the reading I have done on evaluations is that if the instrument is good, the results are usually fairly reliable. Research has shown that students are generally more generous than a colleague or administrator doing the same evaluation. During my years as a chair, I’ve found the complaints fall into three categories: unfair, boring, and too easy. The latter initially was a surprise to me; it is generally in commodified terms like “too easy for the money I pay to go to this school.” Curiously, the positive comments (which far surpass the negative) are less specific and articulate and the most popular are “s/he is cool,” “s/he rocks,” and “s/he is the greatest teacher in the known universe and you should give him/her a really big raise.” After completing a writing class I taught, one student said I was “grate” and I really didn’t know how to take it.

Several years ago I attended a conference where Derek Bok, the former president of Harvard, was talking about his book Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should be Learning More (for you sticklers, I forgot how to do italics in a blog and the last time I tried I lost the entire thing so now I’m italics shy). A good deal of his address was that the professoriate (yes even those at Harvard) must become more informed about teaching pedagogy. The content part was a given, but if we spend a good amount of our careers teaching, then we should treat teaching and learning with the same seriousness and scholarship, especially given the explosion of recent cognitive research and data not available twenty years ago. It’s a book I highly recommend.

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