Advocacy in Action
NCA recently joined 15 learned societies in endorsing an American Sociological Association statement on Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs). According to the statement, SETs play a prominent role in how faculty in North America are evaluated. However, the use of these evaluations in personnel decisions can be problematic. SETs can be affected by course characteristics, such as time of day, are often biased against minority faculty, and have been found to be weakly related to other measures of teaching effectiveness. The ASA statement encourages institutions to use evidence-based best practices for collecting student feedback, and to use student evaluations as part of a more holistic assessment that includes peer observations and other forms of evaluation. You can read the full statement here.