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Office of Faculty Advancement

Teaching Evaluations

Faculty in lecture hall

The Office of Faculty Advancement aims to facilitate your access to current research focused on teaching and learning so you and members of your Department understand the importance of multi-faceted teaching assessment programs. We are also here to help you with navigating the implementation-evaluation-feedback loop to address your instructional needs, to support your development as a teacher, and to provide students with quality learning experiences.

But how exactly is teaching effectiveness evaluated at Clemson University? Read on to learn more about the strategy and how best practices have been considered to ensure your efforts and accomplishments are reported and recognized.

 

A New Approach to Measure Teaching Effectiveness

Teaching and learning are two of your most important tasks as faculty in higher education, and Clemson University wants to see you excel at both. That's why we're shifting our approach to provide you with formative feedback that inspires new growth in your teaching role at Clemson University. 

The University has adopted a new model to gauge your teaching effectiveness and contributions more accurately. In this new model, the evaluation of your teaching effectiveness includes feedback from instruction and course evaluation forms completed by students, where no single quantifier (i.e., one single question) from these forms may substitute for a wide-ranging review of the responses. The model also requires the inclusion of at least two additional evaluation metrics to support that assessment. Among other options, faculty may consider:

  1. Evidence-based measurements of student learning that meet defined student learning outcomes

  2. Evaluation (by peers and/or administrators) of course materials, learning objectives and examinations

  3. In-class visitation by peers and/or administrators

  4. A statement by the faculty member describing the faculty member's methods and/or a teaching philosophy

  5. Exit interviews/surveys with current graduates/alumni

  6. Copies of all course materials (syllabus, lectures, assignments, tests, examples of student work, Canvas page, communications, etc.)

  7. Profile of students (enrollment, the type of student taking the class: concentrators, first-year students, non-specialists, graduate students, etc.), especially important if you made efforts to adapt the class to them (add assessment piece)

  8. Documentation of innovative teaching approaches and special efforts invested to improve learning outcomes

  9. Faculty development efforts related to course design

  10. Inclusion of previous feedback, development of new courses, flipped courses, mentoring of other teachers, etc.

  11. Inclusion of course modules that support the goals of Clemson Elevate (integrating activities aimed at highlighting inclusive excellence, global engagement, service and/or experiential learning, etc.)

  12. Course audit for accessibility (Clemson Online)

Additional metrics to support the evaluation of teaching activities may also be acceptable. The combination of sources should strike a balance between the needs of faculty members and the need for an objective evaluation. We recommend consulting with your department chair(s) to develop the corresponding assessment plans. 

Besides providing much broader options for faculty to measure the teaching and learning impact of their courses, the new strategy also aims to minimize the potential biases introduced when a single assessment method is used, as it is unlikely that multiple metrics will be biased in the same way. Furthermore, and regardless of the amount of literature supporting the importance of using multiple methods when assessing teaching performance, it is critical to highlight the role of faculty engagement and diverse teaching methods in elevating how we assess teaching effectiveness.

Winner of Class of 39 Award addresses an audience outdoors at Clemson University.

 

 

What Prompted These Changes

Student surveys, or student evaluations of teaching (SET) are one of the simplest and most widely used tools to evaluate teaching performance in higher education. Not only are they used by 94% of four-year liberal arts colleges in North America and Australia, but they're widely used in Asia and Europe and have attracted considerable attention in the Far East. While there are numerous reasons institutions might use student surveys to carry out faculty performance — such as cost-effectiveness, the ability to garner feedback with ease and the assumption that students have the ability to measure teaching effectiveness accurately — research shows that this method has a number of weaknesses that may yield inaccurate data, compromising the validity of faculty reports across institutions.

Among other concerns, SETs often represent student opinions of teaching capability instead of being a valid measure of faculty instructional effectiveness and/or student learning. Moreover, the numerical results of these surveys can be influenced by a number of factors that are unrelated to the instructor’s teaching effectiveness, including the type of course, the student’s own interpretation of the questions, the instructor’s attractiveness, personality and attire, the predominant gender of their department, and any incentives in place — from chocolates to grade inflation.

 

These factors also permeate into the “comments” section of the SETs, which can include malicious and abusive remarks, further compromising the overall value of the surveys towards decisions about hiring, firing, merit pay and promotion. It is also worth mentioning that one additional challenge linked to SETs is the low response rate, limiting the statistical value of the data collected. While several guidelines are discussed in the literature (including mandatory participation), these approaches should be carefully implemented, as they can further decrease the validity of the results. 

If you are curious about what prompted these changes, want to learn more about how your performance is measured or would like to see the studies and sources for yourself, explore the list of references relevant to the topics below, as well as additional resources to navigate the new and refreshed process.

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