The Value of Student Evaluations of Teaching

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “The Value of Student Evaluations of Teaching” [Hake (2012)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: Bill Brescia of the DrEd list wrote: “We are looking for best practices to solicit student feedback on the teaching quality of individual faculty members where in some cases a fairly large number of faculty are involved in a single course. What mechanism do you use to survey the students?”

The value of student evaluations is a hotly contested topic, witness the 496,000 hits at http://bit.ly/TqEilE generated by a Google search for “Student Evaluations” (with the quotes) on 26 Nov 2012 12:58-0800

Judging from my own experience, and after careful consideration of the above hits, my opinion is that:

a. Student Evaluations of Teaching (SET’s) are useful for gauging the affective impact of teaching, but are worse than useless for gauging the cognitive impact - see e.g. “Student Evaluations of Teaching Are Not Valid Gauges of Teaching Performance - Yet Again!” [Hake (2012)] at http://bit.ly/KGK687.

b. The cognitive impact of teaching is best measured by average normalized pre-to-post-test gains on "Concept Inventories" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_inventory - see e.g., “The Impact of Concept Inventories On Physics Education and It’s Relevance For Engineering Education” [Hake (2011)] at http://bit.ly/nmPY8F.
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To access the complete 6 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/XX7OUX.

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to Socratic Dialogue Inducing (SDI) Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Academia: http://bit.ly/a8ixxm
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GooglePlus: http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE
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REFERENCES [URL shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 26 Nov 2012.]
Hake, R.R. 2012. “The Value of Student Evaluations of Teaching,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/XX7OUX. Post of 26 Nov 2012 13:35:35-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists.

In Defense of Pre/Post Testing With Concept Inventories

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent discussion-list post “In Defense of Pre/Post Testing With Concept Inventories” [Hake (2012)]. The abstract reads:

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Bruce Sherwood and Paul Camp, in recent posts on the “Physics Education Research Topical Group” (PERTG) discussion list, denigrate pre/post testing with concept inventories, typifying a trend in some physics education research circles to discount such practice as naive and useless.

I think such sentiment betrays an ignorance of the history of PER. In “Lessons from the Physics Education Reform Effort” [Hake (2002)] at http://bit.ly/aL87VT I wrote:

“For more than three decades, physics education researchers have repeatedly shown that traditional introductory physics courses with passive student lectures, recipe labs, and algorithmic problem exams are of limited value in enhancing students’ conceptual understanding of the subject. Unfortunately, this work was largely ignored by the physics and education communities until Halloun and Hestenes (1985a,b) devised the Mechanics Diagnostic test of conceptual understanding of Newtonian mechanics.”

For a review of pre/post testing with concept inventories in physics and engineering see “The Impact of Concept Inventories On Physics Education and It’s Relevance For Engineering Education” [Hake (2011)] at http://bit.ly/nmPY8F (8.5 MB).
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To access the complete 12 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/LaPNbm.

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to SDI Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
Twitter http://bit.ly/juvd52
GooglePlus: http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE

"He who knows only his own generation
Remains always a child."
- Cicero (in Orator)


REFERENCES [URL shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 25 June 2012.
Hake, R.R. 2012. “In Defense of Pre/Post Testing With Concept Inventories,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/LaPNbm. Post of 25 Jun 2012 12:31:15-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists.

Re: Research on the Extent of Active Learning

Some blog followers might be interested in a discussion list post “Re: Research on the Extent of Active Learning” [Hake (2011)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: POD’s Rae Jean Goodman, in her post “Research on extent of active learning,” evidently equating active learning with collaborative work, posed this question (paraphrasing): “It is common knowledge that more ‘collaborative work’ is being assigned and carried out by students, but can anyone recommend authoritative reports or articles that attest to changing learning/teaching modalities?”

In “The Impact of Concept Inventories On Physics Education and It’s Relevance For Engineering Education” [Hake (2011) http://bit.ly/nmPY8F (8.7 MB)] I discussed the implementation of non-traditional reform pedagogy in higher education - relevant to Goodman’s post because reform methods often involve collaborative work and/or active learning. Therein I:

(1) EMPHASIZED economist Bill Goeff’s complaint that psychologists Banta & Blaich (2011), evidently unaware of Physics Education Research, find few cases of improved learning after a teaching innovation despite the work of e.g., Hestenes et al. (1992), Hake (1998a), Crouch et al. (2007), and Deslauriers et al. (2011);

(2) POINTED OUT that:

(a) the glacial inertia of the educational system, though not well understood, appears to be typical of the slow Diffusion of Innovations [Rogers (2003)] in human society;

(b) there are at least “Eleven Barriers to Change in Higher Education”;

(c) even so, for physics education, Rogers’ early adopters of reform have now appeared at e.g., Harvard, North Carolina State University, MIT, the Univ. of Colorado, California Polytechnic at San Luis Obispo, and the Univ. of British Columbia, possibly presaging a Rogers take off for physics education reform, about two decades after the first use of Concept Inventories http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_inventory ; and

(3) CONCLUDED that:

(a) Concept Inventories can stimulate reform, but judging from the results in physics it may take about two decades before even early adopters become evident;

(b) there are at least seven reasons why the rate of adoption of reforms may be greater in engineering education than in physics education.
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To access the complete 27 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/u63GbO.

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands
President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References
which Recognize the Invention of the Internet (PEDARRII)

rrhake@earthlink.net
Links to Articles http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to SDI Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
Academia: http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake

“Physics educators have led the way in developing and using objective tests to compare student learning gains in different types of courses, and chemists, biologists, and others are now developing similar instruments. These tests provide convincing evidence that students assimilate new knowledge more effectively in courses including active, inquiry-based, and collaborative learning, assisted by information technology, than in traditional courses.”
Wood & Gentile (2003)


REFERENCES [All URL's shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 5 Dec 2011.]
Hake, R.R. 2011. “Re: Research on the Extent of Active Learning,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/u63GbO. Post of 4 Dec 2011 19:01:51 -0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists.

Wood, W.B., & J.M. Gentile. 2003. “Teaching in a research context,” Science 302: 1510; 28 November; online as a 209 kB pdf at http://bit.ly/oK46p7.

The Impact of Concept Inventories On Physics Education and It’s Relevance For Engineering Education

Some blog followers might be interested in “The Impact of Concept Inventories On Physics Education and It’s Relevance For Engineering Education” [Hake (2011)].

The abstract reads:

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I review the:
(a) Before Concept Inventory (BCI) dark ages of post-secondary introductory physics education;

(b) 1985 advent of the first physics CI, the Mechanics Diagnostic (MD) by Halloun & Hestenes (HH);

(c) 1987-90 early research use of the (MD) by HH, Hake, and Crouch & Mazur;

(d) 1992 Force Concept Inventory (FCI), successor to the MD, and the Factor Analysis Debate (1995);

(e) 1995 revision of the FCI by Halloun, Hake, Mosca, and Hestenes;

(f) 1998 meta-analysis of FCI/MD results on 62 introductory physics courses (N = 6542) showing about a two-standard-deviation superiority in average normalized gains for “interactive engagement” over traditional passive-student lecture courses by Hake and subsequent confirmation by about 25 other physics education research studies.

I then indicate:

(a) fourteen hard lessons from the physics education reform effort;

(b) suggestions for the administration and reporting of CI’s;

(c) listings of CI’s, including those for physics and engineering; and comment that:

(d) for physics education the road to reform has been all uphill;

(e) the glacial inertia of the educational system, though not well understood, appears to be typical of the slow Diffusion of Innovations [Rogers (2003)] in human society;

(f) there are at least “Eleven Barriers to Change in Higher Education”;

(g) but, even so, for physics education, Rogers’ “early adopters” of reform have now appeared at Harvard, North Carolina State University, MIT, the Univ. of Colorado, California Polytechnic at San Luis Obispo, and the Univ. of British Columbia, possibly presaging a Rogers “take off” for physics education reform, about two decades ACI (After Concept Inventory).

I conclude that:

(a) CI’s can stimulate reform, but judging from the results in physics it may take about two decades before even early adopters become evident;

(b) there are at least seven reasons why the rate of adoption of reforms may be greater in engineering education than in physics education.

In an Appendix I respond to criticisms of the FCI and the average normalized gain g(ave).

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To access the complete 8.7 MB article please click on http://bit.ly/nmPY8F.

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University 24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367

Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands.

rrhake@earthlink.net http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/ http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi/ http://HakesEdStuff.blogspot.com/ http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake

REFERENCES

Hake, R.R. 2011. “The Impact of Concept Inventories On Physics Education and It's Relevance For Engineering Education,” invited talk, 8 August, second annual NSF-sponsored “National Meeting on STEM Concept Inventories,” Washington, D.C., online as an 8.7 MB pdf at http://bit.ly/nmPY8F or as ref. 64 at http://bit.ly/a6M5y0.