Moving Beyond Student Ratings: A Balanced Scorecard Approach for Evaluating Teaching Performance

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This position paper proposes a viable alternative to higher education's current focus on student ratings as the primary metric for summative teaching evaluations (i.e., for personnel decisions). In contrast to the divergent opinions among educational researchers about the validity of student ratings, a strong consensus exists that summative measures derived from the student ratings process represent a necessary rather than a sufficient source for evaluating teaching performance (Cashin 1990; Berk 2005). Accordingly, to more completely describe annual teaching performance, we propose a multisource, multiple-perspective Teaching Balanced Scorecard (TBSC), fashioned from the “classic” Balanced Scorecard developed by Kaplan and Norton (1992a). The TBSC can guide academic administrators to expand their conceptual view of teaching performance beyond the boundaries of the classroom, while coherently communicating the department's teaching expectations to the faculty; consistent with this proposition, we provide supporting evidence from a successful TBSC implementation in an academic department.