Student Ratings of College Teaching: Reliability, Validity, and Usefulness

The past several years have seen a striking increase in attempts to evaluate college teaching. Included in this demand for evaluation has been the widespread use of formal student appraisal of courses and instructors. Several years ago, an extensive survey by Gustad (1961) into the methods of teacher evaluation used by 584 colleges and universities revealed that student ratings were cited most often. More recently, however, Gustad (1967) reported a substantial in the systematic use of student ratings, although he also found that informal student opinions of teaching as well as evaluations by deans and chairmen of departments were frequently used. He suggested that the decline in the use of student ratings was due to the lack of convincing validity data. However, perceived threat to faculty may also be an important cause, since in recent years a strong impetus to use student ratings has come from the students themselves (Werdell, 1967).