How to Improve Your Student Evaluations
I have taught college classes for thirty-five years. Yikes. I like to think I have learned a few things in that time. One of these days I'll write it all down (and like a good academic, provide theoretical and evidence based support for it). But today I'll focus on anecdotal data. When I came to my current position, I was told that I had to earn 4.6 or higher on my student evaluations to advance professionally. I had always gotten 4.4 to 4.5 or so, and thought that was pretty good. Certainly I wasn't expected to be perfect! Yet some of our professors did get 5s, rather frequently. I balked at this like everyone else, but took on the challenge eventually--not willingly, but having to. I did a lot of reading about the subject, although I doubt anyone could really read the volumes on it. Five years ago I read a meta-analysis published in the late '90s on the subject, and at that time there were 3,000 academic articles on the subject. I read 30, 1%, and thought