Top 10 Flashpoints in Student Ratings and the Evaluation of Teaching

ATTENTION: ALL FACULTY & ADMINISTRATORS
“Another book on student ratings? Are you kidding me?” “Nope, but this one is REALLY different.”

Another review of the research or step-by-step on how to develop and interpret rating scales? NOT! (Berk did that with Thirteen Strategies)

Designed to solve YOUR problems, conflicts, and confusion about how to evaluate teaching. Written expressly for YOU with Berk’s signature sense of humor.

FLASHPOINT: a critical stage in a process, trouble spot, contentious issue, volatile hot button, or lowest temperature at which a flammable liquid will give off enough vapor to ignite

The “flashpoints” covered are the topics that pop up the most frequently and heatedly on listservs, blogs, and the literature.

Each flashpoint is defined succinctly, options are presented, and then evidence-based recommendations for concrete action steps are proffered in an effort to stop the popping.
The recommendations are grounded in psychometric, professional, and legal standards. The last-named, in particular, can protect you from costly litigation.

If you hire, promote, demote, and fire full- and part-time faculty based on student ratings and other measures, then you are vulnerable to violations of federal anti-discrimination laws. Several flashpoints address procedures you can take to stay out of court.

If you are a faculty member, you need to know whether your institution’s measures of teaching are appropriate and defensible, and what you should do if they are not.


Four sample “flashpoints” and solutions:
• Use of global items for summative decisions. SOLUTION: “Cease & desist” and use scale and subscale ratings
• Low response rate in online administrations. SOLUTION: 20 strategies to increase rates
• Scales to evaluate online and blended/hybrid courses. SOLUTION: 7 strategies are suggested and evaluated
• Use of ratings for contract renewal, pay raise, teaching awards, and promotion and tenure. SOLUTION: Applying 80/20 rule for adverse impact to avoid lawsuits related to unequal pay, gender, race, ethnicity, and age discrimination

Ronald A. Berk is Professor Emeritus of Biostatistics and Measurement and former Assistant Dean for Teaching, The Johns Hopkins University. He received the University’s Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award in 1993 and Caroline Pennington Award for Teaching Excellence in 1997 and was inducted as a Fellow in the Oxford Society of Scholars in 1998. He has published 11 books and 130 journal articles / chapters. These publications reflect his unwavering commitment to mediocrity and his motto: “Go for the Bronze!” He is a popular speaker on teaching and assessment throughout the U.S. and Europe.