Towards a More Meaningful Evaluation of University Lecturers

Abstract

Evaluating the teaching performance of lecturers in higher education is important for both the Universities and the faculty themselves. Having information about teaching performance is essential to bring about change in student learning and assessment, to incentivize lecturers, to appraise lecturers and to make important administrative decisions. The most common approach to evaluate lecturers is student evaluation of teaching (SET). However, SET is commonly considered to be only a poor reflection of lecturer teaching performance. Here I propose a number of measures to improve SET. I recommend to change the current cardinal grading of lecturers to an ordinal system, in which student rank their best lecturers based on specific criteria. These criteria should be concrete, aligned with the desired attributes of a good lecturer and process-oriented rather than achievement-oriented. To increase student motivation to provide accurate feedback, SET should be directly linked to teaching awards and publicized transparently. Finally, to obtain meaningful formative feedback, lecturers should administer their own feedback surveys, tailored to the specific pedagogical approaches and learning outcomes of their modules. It is hoped that with these measures a more meaningful student evaluation of teaching can be achieved.