Exploring Faculty Beliefs About Teaching Evaluations: What is Missing from Current Measures?

In this research paper, we explore faculty perceptions about what information or data is missing from current evaluation approaches. Faculty evaluation of teaching is ubiquitous across engineering education, and the results of those evaluations play critical roles in institutional decision making. And while numerous studies have explored faculty perceptions of existing measures, relatively less work has asked faculty about what kinds of additional data or information might improve their teaching. To address this gap, we asked engineering 20 faculty members across eight engineering departments what they perceived to be missing from current evaluation practices and measurements. Inductive coding approaches revealed three major areas in which additional information would help improve their teaching. Faculty noted 1) the importance of soliciting additional student feedback beyond traditional student evaluations at the end of the semester; 2) the need for more data regarding student retention and transfer of concepts learning in class; and 3) the potential for soliciting additional peer feedback from colleagues and educational researchers. At the same time, some faculty were satisfied with current approaches to teaching evaluation and did not perceive anything to be missing. Findings point to the opportunity to collect more in-depth, qualitative feedback regarding faculty teaching effectiveness. In particular, expert consultation and creating more spaces to solicit written comments from students might help faculty obtain evaluation data that can both aid in both institutional and pedagogical decision making. Introduction Faculty evaluation of teaching plays a critical role in engineering education, and while data collected through evaluation and assessment processes are ostensibly designed to offer feedback to faculty regarding their effectiveness as instructors, they most often play central roles in discussions of promotion and tenure. Further, despite nearly a century of research surrounding the validity, reliability, efficacy, etc. of evaluations of teaching (Andersen & Miller, 1997; Marsh & Roche, 1997; Pounder, 2007; Spooren, Brockx, & Mortelmans, 2013; Uttl, White, & Gonzalez, 2017), higher education remains generally divided on whether such data belong in merit-based discussions in general. Despite myriad studies across contexts, time periods, and populations, there is no clear consensus on how or if evaluation of teaching should occur, especially as it pertains to student evaluations. If faculty do not see their evaluation results as meaningful or helpful for their improvement, it is only logical they will not use them to make decisions about if or how to improve their teaching. It is thus critical that faculty obtain evaluation results that not only provide them with an accurate depiction of their teaching effectiveness, but that offer insight into strategies for growth and development. And while decades of research have investigated faculty perception of existing evaluation and assessment practices, less has asked faculty what they would like to know in order to improve their teaching. To that end, we pose the following research question: