[Vpaaetal] Faculty Senate Hearing Held on Sept 26, 2006

[Academic Affairs]

To: Faculty and Professional Staff, A&M-Commerce

From: Academic Life Committee (R. N. Singh, co-chair), Faculty Senate

Dated: September 27, 2006

Subject: Addressing the Credibility of Evaluation of Teaching

 

Colleagues, we held an open hearing yesterday to discuss concerns and ideas
relevant to the process of evaluating teaching in our university for annual
faculty evaluation, promotion, and tenure.  I am pleased to report that we
had a meaningful discussion on the topic at the hearing.  On behalf of the
committee and my colleagues in the senate, I want to thank those who came
and expressed their views on a rather complex topic.

 

I am summarizing my notes below the major points made at the hearing.

 

1.	Faculty role of teaching has been recognized by faculty and
administration at A&M-Commerce as being 'central,' 'primary,' and 'the most
important' as compared to other areas of faculty functioning.

 

2.	A&M-Commerce Procedure # 12.01.99.R0.02: Annual Evaluation of
Evaluation of Faculty spells out university wide criteria for evaluating
teaching as recognized in the A&M System Policy #12.01 as well as criteria
that are to be planned by faculty in each department for the purpose.

 

3.	While many departments have followed the System's criteria and
developed and diligently followed own criteria and procedures for evaluating
teaching, there are a few departments that have heavily, arbitrarily,
inconsistently, and in some cases exclusively, followed only one or two
criteria disregarding the complex nature of evaluation of the
teaching-learning process.  That problem needs to be addressed for
enforcement by college deans and department heads.

 

4.	We may consider including the entire teaching portfolio of faculty
while evaluating their performance in classrooms.  Teachers' own
evaluations, evaluations made by peers in the department (consider at least
two colleagues making observations), and evaluation by the department head
(who may visit classes along with other peers, but may not directly
evaluate) are all important for helping the teaching-learning process become
effective.  

 

5.	It is difficult to quantify the quality of teaching;
non-quantitative indicators of class performance may be considered.

 

6.	The faculty senate has generally been opposing a university-wide
system of evaluation of teaching by students.  The development and
enforcement of evaluating teaching should probably stay at each department's
level.

 

7.	The evaluation of teaching in courses by students seems to be
useful, but in limited ways.  

*	Reliability and validity of evaluations done by students have been
questioned in the literature on the subject.
*	Evaluation by students is likely to be correlated to factors such as
students' classification level, their GPA and performance, the grading
process in class, and how the student-evaluation process is done.
*	Narratives of teaching performance done by students may by be useful
to consider, particularly looking for trends in students' comments (e.g.,
when many students have consistently commented on particular problems in
teaching).

 

8.	We may consider providing different weights to various criteria used
for evaluating teaching.

 

9.	Evaluation of teaching should also be used for formative purposes
(e.g., faculty development).

 

10.	Ranking faculty members for teaching in each department seems to be
unnecessary and ought to be avoided.  Unique skills of each faculty member
should be focused on instead.

 

11.	We need to establish a Center for Teaching on campus charged with
faculty development.

 

The committee and faculty senate will be seriously debating issues related
to evaluating teaching in our university in next couple of months.  I again
invite you to send in your comments and suggestions on the topic.  Please
send me your e-mail (Raghu_Singh at tamu-commerce.edu
<mailto:Raghu_Singh at tamu-commerce.edu> ) expressing views. All inputs will
be held in the strictest confidence. Thank you.

 

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