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Evaluating Teaching
Michael J. Galgano, Editor In this issue, four department chairs share their thoughts and experiences on the evaluation of teaching. Each describes the present practices at their respective institutions as well as changes recently instituted or contemplated. Robert W. McAhren, head of the department at Washington and Lee University, reflects upon the importance his university attaches to teaching both in hiring and retention. Moreover, he discusses in great detail practices designed to assist faculty in improving their teaching. Of particular value are the creative uses of student evaluations. Randy Bailey, Chair at SUNY-Geneseo, focuses on the primary problem in evaluating teaching effectiveness: measuring the relationship between what students learn and the quality of instruction. Early in his essay, Bailey mentions the difficulty in using assessment instruments to help improve faculty performance. In the remaining pages, he treats the department's formal and informal procedures, emphasizing the need to use a combination of practices. Finally, he notes what is done at SUNY-Geneseo to encourage and reward good teaching. Carol Gruber, chair at William Paterson College, explores evaluation in the broader context of her institution's changing mission. Since the New Jersey system is unionized, the nature of evaluation is somewhat unique, though the procedures and practices are similar to many types of colleges and universities. Her observations regarding extended narrative evaluations for faculty are especially helpful. Tony Edmonds, chair at Ball State University, reports on a blue ribbon panel created to study the means of evaluating and rewarding effective teaching. His committee's recommendations, and the process followed in reaching them, merit attention and might readily be replicated. With this issue, our second year of publication comes to a close. The response to date, while less than overwhelming, has been positive and encouraging. We have opened discussion on significant subjects, raised useful issues, and offered some helpful advice. Future issues will address fund raising by departments of history, planning for anticipated personnel shortages over the next decade, and advisory committees. If you have an interest in any of these topics, or wish to suggest others, please contact me at the Department of History, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 22807. Also, if you wish to extend discussion on any theme previously treated, letters are always welcome and will be printed. Teaching Evaluation at Washington and Lee University Robert W. McAhren Effective teaching is the first criterion for tenure at Washington and Lee; for later promotion evidence of continuing development as a teacher is the first criterion. Scholarship and academic citizenship also play their role, but if the candidate cannot demonstrate effectiveness as a teacher, no other consider- ations can bring tenure or promotion. Thus, systematic evaluation of teaching effectiveness becomes essential at our institution. As department head I think of teaching evaluation as falling into two categories: evaluation designed to facilitate the candidate's development as a teacher and evaluation designed to aid the institution in making tenure and promotion decisions. Admittedly the two categories overlap, but I try to keep in mind the differences and take steps to accomplish both. In developing teaching abilities, two techniques seem to be of special efficacy for tenure track appointees: student evaluations for the eyes of the teacher only and classroom visitation by the instructor's peers. Only students are in the classroom on a daily basis; this makes students irreplaceable sources of information about the ``delivery'' of a course. Our tenure track appointees solicit anonymous course evaluations from their students assuring them such evaluations are for the teacher's eyes only. This encourages students to be candid and also encourages the instructor to take the evaluations seriously as a means of improving teaching and not simply a matter of documenting a tenure file. If the teacher suspects the evaluation may wind up in a tenure or promotion file, that teacher is unlikely to ask questions about some aspect of the course she or he fears may not be going well. Only if the teacher may hold the questionnaire in absolute confidence can the teacher make full use of the form to improve teaching. We do not have a standard departmental form for this evaluation; instructors develop their own forms to fit the characteristics of the course and may adjust the form as the course changes. Such evaluations are not only an end-of-term affair; I urge instructors to take the time, once in awhile, near the end of a class, to hand out and collect a short evaluation form on that day's class session; that way the teacher can get current feedback and make changes without having to wait until the next term to do so. A good example of such a short form, applied to a lecture, is on page 116 in the Appendices to George Brown's Lecturing and Explaining. Students, however, almost by definition, are not good judges of the currency, relevance, or appropriateness of course content, nor can students very often suggest alternative teaching strategies for dealing with certain topics. Moreover, only senior faculty have the maturity of experience that can help younger faculty over difficulties and warn them of pitfalls. Therefore we supplement student evaluations with classroom visits from senior members of the department. The first year a tenure candidate is with us I usually make the classroom visits myself and encourage the instructor to ``invite'' me for a particular day. In following years, one of the other senior members of the department will visit the candidate several times over the course of a year; after the second year the evaluator will drop in unannounced; the evaluator gives me a written report at the end of the year. These visits by history faculty other than the department head give the instructor an opportunity to glean practical suggestions from more experienced teachers and "show off'' a bit for them. The visiting faculty evaluator gains the opportunity to view firsthand what is happening in the classroom; that opportunity also permits the senior faculty to pass on to the next generation our concerns with teaching. After a year or two I will revisit the candidate's classroom to see what has changed; only W&L history faculty visit W&L history classrooms. One of the more subtle problems in promoting teaching effectiveness is creating a departmental climate that encourages and supports faculty trying to break out of the traditional lecture and hour-exam system. We have twelve history faculty with a large student following. We draw strength from the variety of teaching methods in the department. Junior faculty, however, when facing for the first time the responsibility of teaching a whole course on their own, seek the security of composing a set of lectures. My tactic has been to accept young teachers' inevitable tendency toward the lecture while encouraging them to perfect that technique; George Brown's Lecturing and Explaining is especially useful. I also urge them to add more student library work, paper writing, and class discussion to supplement their lectures and I strongly encourage them to read regularly The Teaching Professor (Magna Publications, 2718 Dryden Drive, Madison, WI 53704). Fostering continuing development of teaching skills in post-tenure faculty poses different problems. Most faculty, with some justification, are relatively satisfied with their pedagogy after they reach tenure. The explicit and continuing commitment of the University to excellence in undergraduate education coupled with the faculty member's own professional priorities, however, help to stimulate post-tenure faculty. The inclusion of a lengthy section on instructional activities in the faculty member's annual activities report and the Dean's comments on such activities in handwritten notes to the faculty member also accomplish this. For political reasons our department does not practice classroom visitation for post-tenure faculty but I try to find ways to foster continuing development not merely in updating content but also in trying other teaching strategies. Informal discussion about teaching provides some inspiration; in addition, a senior faculty member expressing frustration with his or her teaching provides me with an opportunity to suggest experimentation not with whole new pedagogies but with some specific contributions a faculty member might add to an existing methodology. I have found The Teaching Professorso valuable in providing readable summaries of current research on college level teaching and learning and specific suggestions for classroom application that I have purchased an individual subscription for each member of the department; I am hoping that this will provide an added stimulus to discussion among senior faculty and experimentation with new techniques. I have digressed to discuss the development of teaching ability because I regard it as so important to the evaluation of teaching for institutional decisions. When the fostering of effective teaching becomes a part of the common departmental culture, the formal evaluation for tenure and promotion poses fewer problems. It is, of course, essential that everyone understand that we place such a high priority on teaching and that teaching effectiveness brings rewards at W&L. At the time of recruitment, I inform the candidates in writing that we are not a ``publish or perish'' institution but rather effective teaching is the first criterion for tenure and promotion. During the interview process I discuss this matter with the candidates, urging them to consider carefully the implications for the ``shape'' of their career. I tell them that candidates with adequate research records have not gained tenure because of teaching deficiencies, I explain that evidence of continuing professional development and achievement is essential but the definition of that is flexible and includes ongoing pursuit of research projects (especially in the summer when we are not in session) but not necessarily publication. This assures not only that the candidate even before receiving an offer understands our priorities but also that candidates who accept an offer from us do so because they find our priorities attractive. An additional means of conveying our institutional emphasis is the requirement that, at midyear, each faculty member submit to the academic dean an activities report. The report's first section, ``Instructional Activities,'' poses a series of detailed questions beginning with a term-by-term list of courses taught (with their enrollments) and continuing with questions regarding student independent study or honors projects the instructor has directed, guest lectures the instructor has given in other classes, new or substantially revised courses taught, curricular changes the instructor has promoted, student advising activities, additional contributions to the teaching program, activities engaged in to improve teaching (such as summer seminars), articles or textbooks completed or revised that relate to the teaching of the instructor's discipline, participation in summer teaching programs, and visiting professorships held at other institutions. In subsequent sections the form goes on with similarly detailed questions on scholarship and University and community service but it is the ordering of the sections and detailed nature of the questions posed that reflect and convey to the new faculty member, as well as the old, our institutional priorities. Formal institutional assessment of the tenure candidate's teaching ability begins with the candidate's first year. I meet annually with our academic dean to provide information that will go into salary decisions; we discuss and evaluate each department member's activities report beginning always with teaching; the Dean will often convey some results of this discussion in handwritten notes accompanying salary notices. At year's end the department head must provide the candidate with an evaluation of progress towards meeting the criteria for tenure. In this evaluation, I always begin with a discussion of the candidate's teaching effectiveness, again to emphasize our priorities. My information for this usually comes from classroom visitation, and, after the first year, will include some student evaluations I have collected independently of the instructor. I follow this discussion with a written summary identifying strengths along with specific suggestions for improvement. For tenure track appointees, we provide two contract renewals. For the first renewal I purposely collect evaluations from current students as well as alumni and conduct a relatively low-key consultation with the tenured members of the department. The second renewal requires preparation of the nucleus of what will become the evidence in support of tenure a file. The evidence we begin collecting at this time is extensive. We again ask for student and alumni evaluations from those we did not solicit at the first renewal. The questions to current students include an inquiry regarding the year the student took the candidate's course (to facilitate evaluating the response within the context of the candidate's entire career with us). They also include whether the instructor did the following: organized the material and assignments in a coherent pattern; was prepared for each class; could explain difficulties or answer questions in helpful ways; was accessible outside of class and encouraged students to see her or him about special problems with course material; made clear daily assignments, exams, and grading standards; and provided, after an exam, criticism and assistance that enabled the student to improve on the next exam or paper. I also ask whether the student completed the course with a sense of having mastered important knowledge, ways of thinking or skills and used that knowledge or those ways of thinking and skills, in other courses or activities. Finally, I ask how the student would rate the course and the teacher against other similar courses and teachers. These questions are more general than those the teacher may ask on a course evaluation as the teacher is more concerned with individual assignments, lectures or class discussions and should therefore design an evaluation that addresses those issues. The department need not be quite so specific but can and should pose questions that address the qualities research shows characterize good teaching: enthusiasm, preparation, organization, clarity, ability to stimulate, and the teacher's knowledge. I rely quite heavily on evaluations from alumni within three years of their graduation, although they may not remember the details of a specific course, they can nonetheless evaluate it within the broad context of their entire undergraduate career as well as of their postgraduate experience. My questions to alumni are, then, fewer and less specific than to current students. As with students, I ask alumni the year they had courses with the candidate and some of the last items on the student questionnaire such as, ``Did you complete the course with a sense of accomplishment, that is, do you think you mastered important material, ways of thinking, or skills in the course?'' and, ``Were you able to use that material, those ways of thinking, or skills in other courses or in later life?'' and, ``How would you rate the course when compared with other similar courses you completed at W&L?'' In addition, I often solicit information from other faculty who, for one reason or another, have direct or indirect experience with the candidate's teaching. I also invite the candidate to prepare a statement covering some very specific questions regarding her or his goals and methods of teaching and ask the candidate to provide a selection of teaching materials, such as syllabi, hour tests, final exams and other relevant written course material, that will illustrate the candidate's development over time. I try to get as broad a body of information as possible; where the number is small, I send questionnaires to all persons who have taken the candidate's courses. When the number is too large for that, I go over class rosters to select students and alumni whose judgment I respect; I invite the other faculty involved in making decisions about the candidate to do the same. I then ask the candidate also to go over the list. While I do not give the candidate a veto on those whom we have chosen, I do encourage the candidate to add names to the list. Although the result will be a list predominately composed of majors, we make no deliberate effort in that direction nor do we know the students' grades in the candidate's courses. I make no pretense that this is a ``scientific'' sample. What this process does yield is a list of persons in whom we all have confidence. We mail the questionnaires to students and alumni with a stamped return envelope and get a good return rate. On one recent promotion, the return rate for alumni questionnaires was 58% and 74% for students. In a recent tenure case, the rate was 59% for alumni and 67% for students. Interpretation of this data requires some judiciousness. I use open-ended questions to students, alumni, and faculty so they will have to write a response. In reading their answers, I am looking not only to see whether the candidate meets our expectations regarding preparation, organization, etc., but also to see whether the language and tone of the response reflects enthusiasm on the part of the evaluator. Course materials, such as syllabi and examinations, allow faculty to exercise their particular competence. We examine syllabi to see that reading materials assigned students are appropriate and reflect the current thinking of the profession. I also look for test questions that require essay answers and cause the student to analyze, synthesize or evaluate, in other words, to do more than memorize and recall. Other items may go into the file including reports on classroom visitations. The overall purpose of this file is to give a longitudinal view of the candidate's development. We cannot expect the beginning teacher to meet with immediate success but we can and do look for improvement. Two problems may arise in considering a candidate for tenure. One is that faculty may hear critical comments from individual students, comments that often acquire undue weight in a faculty member's mind. I emphasize to the senior faculty the importance of resting their judgment on the broad base of evidence, not on one or two ill-considered remarks. A second problem has to do with the inevitable tendency of faculty to think their way of teaching is the way. Here the recent research documenting not only that there are different teaching styles, but different learning styles, permits me to argue that a variety of teaching styles permits the department to appeal to a broader spectrum of students. For promotion of post-tenure faculty, we collect similar information, one difference being that the file includes only information relevant to the candidate's teaching since the tenure decision. Again we emphasize the importance of continuing development; it is essential that the faculty member challenge himself or herself and students by continuing efforts to improve teaching. These formal procedures have been in place for only a few years. Several years ago a new administration asked an ad hoc faculty committee to review existing standards for tenure and promotion. That review yielded a reaffirmation of the primary importance accorded to teaching effectiveness at our institution; the administration then asked the same committee to develop formal procedures for faculty evaluation. With respect to teaching, the result was a list of most, if not all, recognized ways of evalu- ating teaching and an injunction to use some, but not any one particular procedure when presenting candidates for promotion and tenure. The initial reaction among history faculty was opposition to the new procedures as overly bureaucratic, time consuming, and laborious. Classroom visitation remains controversial; some regard it as intrusive or worse and refuse to participate. I have gotten around this by applying classroom visitation only to tenure track appointees, who, I might add, have accepted and even welcomed this opportunity. I think they gain some security from the knowledge we are actively evaluating their teaching and providing them with feedback. As the practical results of applying these procedures have manifested themselves in two cases of promotion and one tenure decision, opposition has declined; some opponents have even conceded the procedures' value. Our system is by no means unique or complete; its keynote is flexibility. Within the general guidelines that imply, we must show a systematic and responsible approach to teaching evaluation. We are free to tailor the procedures to individual candidates and the departmental culture. Our system continues to evolve. Nevertheless, in the time we have used it, it has served us well. Assessing Teaching Effectiveness at SUNY-Geneseo Charles R. Bailey A question that leaps to mind when considering pedagogy from an administrative viewpoint is not so much whether teaching itself is effective but, rather, whether the evaluation of it can be effective. Can we measure, quantitatively or otherwise, how much college students learn? Or are we stuck with vague perceptions of whether or not our colleagues are ``good teachers?'' The answer to the foregoing concerns, at least for the college at Geneseo, falls somewhere in the middle. That is, we cannot measure, in anything approaching scientific precision, what our students learn. Indeed, I doubt that we would want to use classroom methods that would enable us to make such determinations. On the other hand, we can judge, in a general sense, our worth in working with students. In particular, we know who is excellent and who is lousy, although we have considerable difficulty in making distinctions for the vast majority who fall between the extremes. How we look at teaching is roughly formal and informal, both for the department as a whole and for individuals. In a formal sense, the department has participated for the past two years in the Major Field Achievement Test sponsored by the Educational Testing Service. The results show that our students are doing reasonably well vis--vis students nationwide, but the tests have not been particularly useful in helping us to improve. One problem with them is that they contain no questions on Ancient Greece and Rome which we consider important for our students. In addition, the test areas outside the United States and Europe areas on which we have begun to place considerable emphasis on those (``Non-West'')areas. More informally, each year the department receives the results for the history students who participate in the Annual Senior Survey administered by the college's Office of Institutional Research. This survey has proved useful to us, especially a part in which students are encouraged to write comments. In particular, they have induced us to think about, and to alter, the structure of our Senior Seminar. More important than assessment of teaching involving the department as a whole undoubtedly is that concerning individuals, because it is a factor in making decisions about tenure and promotion. Two formal procedures come into play here. First, the chairperson and members of the department's Personnel Committee independently visit classes of any person for whom such decisions will be made. Those visits are worthwhile, although it is also true that we, at the departmental level, tend not to be very critical of one another. Second, all members of the faculty, including those of our department, are required to have each of their classes participate in student-administered, largely quantifiable surveys called SOFIs (Student Opinion of Faculty Instruction). (These had the title, at one time, of Course/Instructor Evaluations, but several years ago some individuals, primarily members of the Department of Psycholo- gy, convinced the faculty that the results were not sufficiently scientific to warrant the appellation.) The items for which results are quantifiable include a general rating of the course, an assessment of the difficulty of the material, a general rating of the instructor, and a perception of the availability of that person outside of the classroom. For some questions the responses are usually mystifying (e.g., some professors are rated low on an item pertaining to keeping students apprised of their progress even though evaluation in the course includes a number of quizzes, two hour examinations, and two papers, all of which are handed back fairly promptly, plus a final examination). In any case, the results of the SOFIs, when examined for a number of years, help administrators and others on campus, all of whom have access to the data, to determine who the students believe to be the excellent, the average, and the lousy teachers. Professors can also add some questions of their own, and students can write comments. The latter sometimes help instructors to improve their courses, but high-level administrators usually do not see such comments. Informal evaluative methods to learn about the classroom performance of individuals, which prove to be worthwhile to members of the department, if not to persons higher up, are conversations with students, bull sessions with colleagues, and vague notions of campus-wide reputations. I believe that a combination of all of the above methods of evaluation provides an effective tool to measure effective teaching, when effectiveness is considered non-scientifically and according to common sense. One must also consider, however, how administrators, especially upper-level ones, use evaluation of teaching in making personnel decisions. ``On the books'' is a guideline that performance in the classroom is to count for fifty percent. In reality, however, the common perception is that top administrators are inconsistent, if not capricious. That is, they appear to weigh teaching ratings, good or otherwise, more heavily or more lightly according to other factors (e.g., amount of publishing or campus service). Thus, good teaching does not automatically bring tenure or promotion, and poor teachers sometimes are rewarded based on other considerations (in particular, for being a scholar of international repute). What do we do to encourage good teaching? At the campus level the administration has sessions for the orientation of new members of the faculty, but such sessions give little or no guidance on what to do in the classroom. A Faculty Development Committee sponsors lectures, sometimes on themes and training courses on how to become computer-literate. It also encourages faculty members to visit classes of their colleagues who have reputations as good teachers. In addition, the college rewards excellent teaching through a few Distinguished Teaching Professorships (a distinction that is SUNY-wide) and, somewhat lower on the scale, through citing each year two or three persons for Excellence in Teaching. At the department level we occasionally have colloquia devoted to teaching methods. In addition, of course, we often talk informally about what we do in the classroom. I believe the best method we use to encourage one another to become better teachers is by providing opportunities, either as a result of announcements by the Faculty Development Committee or otherwise, to observe what others do. Team-teaching, especially with someone from another department in the two mandatory humanities courses, has been an especially valuable vehicle for such observation. When all is considered and said, it seems that it is best to encourage persons to teach well, to have them see good teachers in action, and to give them the freedom to develop their own techniques and styles. The members of our department, and especially the untenured assistant professors, know that to be given tenure and to be promoted they must produce in the world of publishing as well as in the classroom. I believe that, for the most part, they have succeeded in becoming good teachers while also doing some publishing. Evaluating Teaching At William Patterson College Carol S. Gruber William Paterson College is part of the New Jersey state college system; it is a unionized campus; it has a relatively new vice president for academic affairs, whose agenda has involved changing the college's academic culture; and the history department traditionally has had standards and characteristics that have made it distinctive. Each of these conditions is germane to addressing the issue of teaching evaluation in the department and the college. Historically, the state colleges have had the role of teaching institutions (as distinct from Rutgers, the state university, which is committed to research and graduate education). Reflecting that primary purpose, teaching loads at WPC are twelve hours a semester and the teaching function of the academic profession has, until recently, been the defining one i.e., to be a professor at WPC has meant being a college teacher. Many faculty augmented that function by contributing considerable amounts of service to the institution on the departmental, school, and college levels. When I first arrived at the college thirteen years ago serious scholarship research, supported by outside funding, regular publication, participation in professional activities, and professional visibility and reputation was rare. Significantly, the serious scholars were respected, but they were few and atypical. Their numbers began to increase over the years, but WPC's mission and identity as a teaching institution did not change. As a union (American Federation of Teachers) campus, WPC's personnel matters particularly faculty retention, tenure, and promotion are strictly regulated by contract. Non-tenured faculty are on one-year contracts, with the tenure decision being made in the fifth year. Annually, non-tenured faculty are evaluated as follows: student evaluations, on a uniform form agreed to jointly by the bargaining agent and the administration, are conducted in each class taught by the faculty member; and three peer evaluations are conducted, in a form determined by the department, in classes that must include both general education and elective courses. Procedures, which range from details about the numerous forms involved (like numbers of copies to be filed and signatures affixed), to the major issue of means of challenging a negative decision, are strictly delineated and must be adhered to. An adversarial climate generally has surrounded the personnel process, with faculty bodies reluctant to criticize their probationary peers, and with heated battles waged, under union leadership, to save the jobs of colleagues rejected by the administration for retention or tenure. Three and a half years ago a new vice president for academic affairs with a commitment to ``improving the faculty's quality'' was appointed at the college. He immediately made it plain that scholarship would weigh heavily in personnel decisions beginning with hiring and continuing through retention, tenure, and promotion. Whereas ``scholarship'' always had figured among the retention, tenure, and promotion criteria, it had not been rigorously defined and its absence never was a deciding factor. Now publication of articles in refereed journals and of scholarly books became decisive. This attempt to drastically change the academic culture was welcomed by some faculty but gave rise to anger in some quarters and to considerable anxiety. Senior faculty who had made their mark as teachers and who performed important service suddenly felt devalued. Faculty hired under the previous administration and approaching tenure felt the rules had been changed midstream. Senior faculty who supported the change urged the administration to be sensitive to ``teacher/service'' colleagues and to be flexible with people in the pipeline. A struggle over promotion decisions led to the faculty senate calling, unsuccessfully, for a vote of no confidence in the president and vice president for academic affairs. Despite the resistance and remnants of resentment, the academic vice president appears to have achieved his goal: it now is understood that commitment to scholarship and scholarly achievement are expected of WPC faculty. The faculty's character is changing. For at least the past fifteen years, the history department's hiring standards have been among the most rigorous on campus. Traditionally, only candidates who had completed the Ph.D. degree, had teaching experience, and presented evidence of scholarship and a research agenda, were considered for jobs in the department. The department hired only those people it expected to be able to recommend for tenure. Thus, the history department not only was unafraid of the administration's campaign for faculty ``quality,'' it was in a good position to profit from it. For the administration, the department, and the union, student evaluations are the starting point for measuring teaching effectiveness. Because the evaluations are entirely quantitative and are uniform across the campus, they appear to be an objective index of teaching. The returns go to the academic computing center where they are analyzed a detailed statistical breakdown and summary of the student responses is provided for each class. It is, indeed, helpful to know, for example, that an instructor receives poor scores in general education courses, but high ones in electives. With a scale of one to six (six being the highest), it is revealing if an instructor consistently is ranked below four in individual questions and in the summary and overall ratings. It is useful to be alerted to wide standard deviations. The recent sophistication of the computerized analysis has enhanced the usefulness of student evaluations as a measure of teaching effectiveness. But their usefulness is limited to identifying problems; they offer no clues to why a problem exists or where its remedy might be found. The history department places great weight on classroom observations. We have long since abandoned the quantitative form (similar to the one students fill out) used by most departments, to evaluate our peers. Apart from the fact that faculty seem to have more difficulty being honest than students (perhaps because they are not protected by anonymity), with the result that they habitually assigned their peers mostly sixes, with an occasional five thrown in for credibility, the numerical ranking system proved to be useless for diagnosis and prescription, and a handicap in presenting our candidates for reappointment to the administration. Instead, we write narrative observations of up to two pages in length, that describe the content of the class, discuss teaching methods, comment on student responsiveness and behavior, and make suggestions for improvement. This format has proved to be helpful for everyone involved in the retention process. In particular, the chair is able to work constructively with junior colleagues, to track progress toward tenure, and to present colleagues as thoughtfully described individuals to the administration. Because problems are identified and addressed annually, the chair also is protected if negative decisions must be made. Thus far I have confined my remarks to teaching evaluation of non-tenured faculty. They are the only ones to undergo that compulsory process. The one exception is tenured faculty who apply for promo- tion; they must submit to the standard student and peer evaluation in the year of their application. There are other avenues for paying attention to teaching. Faculty initiative and administrative support has resulted in several campus-wide programs whose focus is on pedagogy. Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) is perhaps the most visible. It was introduced by faculty in the English Department several years ago and now has a faculty director, conducts regular workshops, publishes a newsletter and engages faculty from virtually every department on campus. Although it may be difficult to measure the outcome of the program, WAC has given the importance of teaching prominence on campus. Two race and gender projects one campus-wide and one in the history department funded by outside sources have resulted in model curricula and ongoing faculty seminars. While they originated in ideological concerns and involve fewer people than WAC they, too, have drawn attention to teaching. A small group of faculty meets monthly, sometimes with outside speakers, to discuss issues relating to teaching. History department members have played an active and prominent role in all of these initiatives. Not surprisingly, although the academic vice president appeared to take good teaching for granted when he focussed on scholarship, his efforts have had a positive affect on the quality of classroom instruction. In increasing the amount of released time for research available to junior faculty, from three to six credits a year, which may be taken in one semester, he made it possible for their teaching not to suffer from their scholarship. Senior faculty now are pressing for the same advantage. More important, far from distracting faculty from teaching, scholarship nourishes it. Our younger scholar colleagues are among the most engaged teachers on campus. While I have emphasized the serious attention being paid to teaching effectiveness the picture on the WPC campus is not entirely rosy. There are tired, senior teachers who are indifferent (even hostile) to the new programs and beyond the reach of evaluation. The union, not altogether unjustifiably, is suspicious of various new proposals for assessment, for fear that they will be misused by the administration. And to my mind, paradoxically, quality teaching is frustrated by the very fact that we still essentially are a teaching institution, and have regular teaching loads of twelve hours a semester. These considerations do not even address the overarching problem: the seemingly insurmountable difficulty of teaching history to young people who are products of contemporary American culture. The Evaluation and Reward of Teaching: Confessions of a Department Head Who Agreed to Chair a Blue Ribbon Committee on Evaluating Teaching Anthony O. Edmonds
Had I known that colleagues I respect and even like would make these comments to my face, in fact I probably would have said, ``Sorry, wrong number'' when the Provost called me two years ago. Innocently, coaxingly, he purred: ``Tony, my good friend, how'd you like to head up a little committee for me?'' Alas, I said, ``Yes.'' And from the fall of 1987 through the spring of 1988, fifteen of us met, called, wrote, counseled, asked, yelled, screamed, ate pizza at midnight, and somehow put together a twenty-eight page ``report.'' What I want to do here is combine a description of both the process of developing the content of the report with some generic suggestions for any university or depart- ment who wants to embark on such a study. First step: Establish a broad-based committee. The Provost and I agonized on this one. We agreed at the outset to limit the project to undergraduate education and staff the committee with both students and faculty, including a representative from the ranks of temporaries. We chose faculty with solid reputations as both first-rate teachers (most of them award winners of some sort) and students who were bright and energetic. Finally we wanted a balance among disciplines. (We did not seek token representation from minorities, although seven of the fifteen members were women.) Second step: Find a time when everyone can meet. This can't be done with fifteen people save late at night or early in the morning. Thus sleep was at a premium. Third step: Don't reinvent the hammer. At our first meeting, we divided into three subcommittees. The first surveyed every undergraduate department at Ball State to determine what was already being done. We discovered, as might be expected, some commonalities and great diversity. All forty-two undergraduate departments had in place some mechanism for evaluating and rewarding teaching and all used student evaluations as part of the process. But the relative weight given to teaching in tenure, promotion, and merit decisions varied greatly from department to department as did the types of evaluation instruments other than student evaluations. The second subcommittee scoured the extant research on the topic and concluded, not remarkably, that excellent teaching should be rewarded. Moreover, it became clear that identifying such excellence was much more difficult than verifying scholarly productivity. Studies almost unanimously indicated that multiple sources should be used to ``prove'' teaching excellence: student evaluations, peer visitation, course syllabi, publication, presentation of teaching, formal advising activities, and self-evaluation. Moreover, most studies suggested that financial rewards for teaching excellence, e.g., merit raises, be supplemented with non-financial ones, e.g., released time for course development or retraining. The final subcommittee surveyed similar comprehensive state universities. What were institutions like Ball State up to? It found a great deal of rhetoric about teaching excellence but little in the way of concrete programs and detailed institutional support, although, as noted below, one superb idea emerged from this survey. Fourth step: Hammer out a final report. As chair, I took the three subcommittee reports and blended them into a working paper. The committee then met in two marathon evening sessions to work out a consensus. Unanimity was hard to find, especially over the issue of merit awards or teaching excellence. Ultimately, however, consensus emerged (perhaps because everyone was exhausted), and a final report appeared. Fifth step: Recommend, then duck and cover: The Provost distributed the report in the fall of 1988. Among its most important recommendations were the following:
In response to our recommendation, for the past year and a half, colleges and departments have been reassessing the role of teaching. For example, the College of Sciences and Humanities now requires student evaluations for all faculty teaching in the college. The history department is developing a portfolio approach to evaluation of teaching in which candidates for promotion, tenure, and merit pay, will submit evidence from multiple sources. The Provost generously responded to our second recommendation by establishing a substantial travel budget to support faculty participation in conferences and workshops dealing specifically with pedagogical issues. Awarded on a competitive basis, some $12,000 was used last year by faculty seeking new ideas for teaching improvement. Finally, the University has implemented The University Teaching Professorship Program. Based on a similar program at Ohio University and modified to fit Ball State's needs, the program works as follows. Sophomores, juniors, and seniors vote for the one classroom teacher who has most challenged and educated them. When votes are tallied, two rankings are developed: total votes and total votes as a percentage of students taught the previous semester. The ten to twelve instructors with the highest combined rankings are finalists for the three professorships for the following academic year. A committee of students, teachers, and administrators, then observes the finalists in the classroom and interviews them as a basis for selecting the three recipients. In addition to receiving financial awards a merit increase, a course development grant, and a summer stipend each recipient is asked to teach his or her ``dream course.'' This unique feature encourages teaching innovation and curricular change. It goes beyond mere financial reward by giving our best professors a chance to experiment, to imagine, to dream. In the first year of the program, over six thousand students voted. The three recipients an architect, a historian, and a philosopher (who, incidentally, is a temporary faculty member) are teaching courses on creativity, Soviet Culture, and American Indian Philosophy respectively. Their classes are filled and, symbolically, the teaching enterprise is being recognized. I suppose that the skeptics are still out there. I overheard some complaints (totally unjustified, in my view) about a ``mere'' temporary being honored. There are those who will never believe in the validity of student evaluations, although the use of multiple sources to evaluate teaching helps mollify them. I have certainly learned to include all constituencies and to be patient about perceptions. And I think the University is a modestly better place because all of us including department chairs have seriously thought about our roles as teachers. All in all, I'm glad the Provost did call me, although my behind still awaits its kicking. Maybe that particular colleague is too busy improving his teaching to worry about my posterior. Interested parties may obtain copies of the final report of the Committee on the Evaluation and Reward of Teaching by writing Anthony O. Edmonds, History Department, Ball State University, Muncie IN 47306. Council of Chairs to Meet at the OAH in Washington, DC Several studies recently published indicate that there will be dramatic increases in vacancies for history faculty over the next decade. While it seems likely that there will be some increase in employment opportunities for historians, we know very little about the precise nature and scope of these opportunities. History department chairs, in particular, will need much better information that we now have in order to plan adequately for these needs. To this end, we have scheduled a meeting of the OAH Council of Chairs for March 24, 1990, during the joint annual meeting of the OAH and the Society for History in the Federal Government in Washington, DC. The meeting will be from 12 o'clock noon until 1:30 p.m. in the Caucus Room of the Washington Hilton (1919 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.). Michael Galgano will chair the session, a forum which will discuss ``Expansion of History Enrollments in the 1990s: The Need for Careful Planning.'' We also hope to have representatives from federal agencies and higher education associations on hand to provide background information for this session. Please plan to attend! Request to Subscribers A recent National Academy of Sciences sponsored survey indicates that there were only five doctorates in history awarded to black historians in 1988. The situation with other minorities was little different. To address this and related problems, OAH is considering expanding the Council of Chairs Newsletter to contain regular information about production of minority Ph.D.s, notices of fellowships and other opportunities, and descriptions of model programs that may be useful to history department chairs. We would like to hear from our subscribers on whether this undertaking would be valuable to them and whether they might be willing to help us collect such information. |
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