Guidelines for the Evaluation of Teaching
Summative (end-of-term) evaluations provide useful information for gauging the effectiveness of teaching. However, like all indicators of performance summative evaluations have limitations. They sample students' ideas and impressions about instruction at one time for a course that is delivered over an extended period of time. Additionally, the UMD Teaching Evaluation Task Force Report (2019) shows summative evaluations tend to measure students' implicit bias rather than teaching effectiveness.
Therefore, to evaluate the complex activity of teaching and how teaching affects learning, the University must rely on a range of indicators, rather than just one numerical index (see section 202.200 in the Collective Bargaining Agreement). For department heads and administrators to examine several types of evidence about teaching, faculty must submit pertinent materials for review in their FIRs (Faculty Information Reports), P/T (Promotion and Tenure) files, and/or ARFs (Academic Record Files). Examples of materials departments may identify as appropriate for its members include and are not limited to:
- Listings of one's courses, credits, and numbers of students
- Descriptions and estimates of the time/labor expended in consulting with students, advising, and supervising internships, etc.
- Descriptions/listings of activities, workshops, publications, conferences, and leaves that demonstrate a plan to improve one teaching, expand its scope, and/or change its orientation
- Descriptions/listings of one's outreach efforts that involve the mission of teaching, broadly conceived
- Development of new courses and/or teaching materials as well as the adaptation of existing courses to new technologies and/or different audiences
- Teaching materials including syllabi, assignments, summaries of methods/goals, videotapes of one's teaching, and instructional software one develops
- Qualitative evaluations of instruction by students
- Peer evaluations of teaching (e.g., the Psychology Department's Peer Evaluation Form for Faculty Course Evaluations)
- Self "analysis/interpretation of their course evaluations" as stated in section 202.100 in the Collective Bargaining Agreement (e.g., the Psychology Department's Self Evaluation Form for Faculty Course Evaluations; additional resources available through the University of Kansas's Benchmarks for Teaching Effectiveness framework)
- Plans for improving one's instruction, including classroom teaching, field placements, preparation of materials, and assessment of learning (normally, such plans respond to previous evaluations)
- Pre- and post-assessments of students' learning
- Formative (mid-course) evaluations of teaching and related responses for the class
- Feedback from former students and/or their employers
- Site coordinator's evaluations of internships/practica one oversees
- Evaluations of pertinent outreach activities by peers and/or members of the community
Each faculty member chooses from the list of their department's teaching evaluation tools, and the department head then quantifies the measures for administrative purposes. For example, the Psychology Department has developed rubrics to quantify faculty teaching evaluations that other departments may adapt (Tenure-Track/Tenured Faculty Merit Evaluation Rubric; Contract Faculty Merit Evaluation Rubric).