An exploration of attitudes held by faculty regarding the formative use of student evaluations of faculty

The purpose of this qualitative study was to interview members of a faculty population in one liberal arts department of a large, metropolitan university to assess their attitudes toward formative uses of student evaluation results and the use of those evaluation results for improving their personal teaching methodology. The interviews were analyzed by extracting common themes to obtain a complete representation of the teachers' experiences and attitudes toward their formative uses of the SIRS results. Some teachers found the SIRS results to be of value and asserted that they could be used to not only improve a teacher's approach, but also as a means for communication between students and teachers. However, others believed the results to be nearly worthless and harbored a myriad of reasons for these beliefs that they attributed to a survey and process perceived as difficult, useless, and (in some cases) inapplicable to their courses.; Nearly all of the teachers interviewed had suggestions for improving both the SIRS instrument and the review process. The enhancements they suggested that could be of benefit included the addition of teacher supplements and teacher support groups, provision of student demographics and norms, inclusion of additional information regarding the SIRS for both students and faculty, more detailed teacher rating norms, and rewording questions to obtain a greater amount of qualitative student commentary and feedback that is more specific in nature. It was discussed that overall better survey and question design would be beneficial for increasing course applicability and student compliance and comprehension. In addition, it was suggested that the SIRS process might be improved through the administration of the survey via computer and the open publication of all SIRS results.; At the end of the interviews and subsequent analysis, I was left with an overall impression from each teacher of his or her global perception of the SIRS. Although some teachers were negative about the SIRS process and survey, many had specific ideas for suggested improvements that they believed would make the system much more useful and assist them in formatively improving both their teaching methodology and course design.