Evaluation 101: What higher education institutions should consider when evaluating professors

1. What is the principle behind faculty evaluation?
2. Setting goals for instructor evaluation
3. Examples of Instructor Evaluation Questions
4. How to Evaluate the Feedback Professors Receive
5. Improving Student Evaluation Accuracy and Reliability
6. Survey and Evaluation Tools

Teaching is an art that's difficult to master, which means that feedback is essential to help your faculty members grow. Professor performance evaluations give instructors insight directly from students to improve teaching ability and reach students more effectively. In addition to invaluable feedback, professor evaluations help hold your campus staff to a higher degree of accountability and keep employees committed to honing their skills.

What is the principle behind faculty evaluation?

The teacher evaluation system is an ever-revolving cycle that allows for consistent progress. Teacher effectiveness refers to a teacher's ability to improve student learning through testing, comprehension, and more. All professor course evaluations should be guided by the five points of teacher effectiveness. This outlines what professors should do to be effective instructors, including the following:

1. Hold their students to high expectations and help students achieve high measures on test-based and alternative measures of growth
2. Contribute positive academic and behavioral outcomes for students, including but not limited to regular attendance, self-efficacy, cooperative behavior, and on-time graduation
3. Use a diverse multitude of resources to create engaging lessons and effectively monitor student progress and adapt instruction as necessary to engage evolving student need
4. Contribute to their classrooms and schools while valuing civic-mindedness and diversity
5. Collaborate with their department, administrators, and other education professionals in their field of study to ensure success for all students

Setting goals for instructor evaluation

What are you hoping to gain from faculty evaluations? More specifically, in which areas do you want to see the most improvement?

Defining your goals for faculty evaluations can help you determine what information you need to gather so you can find the right questions to ask in your evaluations. Some example goals include:

• Learning outcomes: Professors should find effective ways to meet changing job market demands by incorporating in-demand skills like digital literacy and collaboration into their lesson plans. You can assess progress toward this goal by evaluating how a professor uses available tech tools throughout the course.
• Student engagement: Ideally, professors should make an effort to keep students interested and engaged throughout the course. Tracking student behaviors like attendance and participation can help you determine how well a professor is doing.
• Encourage innovation: Higher education institutions should encourage students to explore new and creative ideas, and professors play a key role in facilitating innovation. Questions asking students about the professor's efforts to create a welcoming and inclusive environment will help you understand how well they met this goal.
• Continuous improvement: Professors need to participate in ongoing learning and professional development activities to keep up with changes in their field and further improve their teaching methods. You can track participation through data such as faculty members' conference attendance, course enrollment, and participation in collaborative learning communities.
• Relationship with students: Building strong rapport with students is essential for facilitating positive outcomes in both academic and non-academic units. In your evaluation, you can ask students what resources and support was available to them throughout the course. For example, you could ask whether the professor went above and beyond to help students understand difficult concepts.

It's also important to remember that student evaluations aren't — and shouldn't be — the only means by which you assess faculty performance. Acknowledging the limitations of student feedback can help you create more realistic evaluation goals that clearly align with your desired outcomes.

Examples of instructor evaluation questions

To evaluate a professor's teaching thoroughly, you must approach their classroom from many angles. Student evaluations of professors are one aspect of a holistic evaluation process and your administration should use them in conjunction with observations, grades, student success, and more. It's important to remember that all professors have room for improvement, and feedback is required to improve teaching ability.

Versatile college professor evaluation criteria are invaluable for professors across multiple disciplines, subjects, and departments. Keep instructor evaluation forms relatively short to minimize decision fatigue and give students time to write their thoughts after the multiple-choice selection. Watermark recommends using the following evaluation categories and criteria as an instructor evaluation checklist for a holistic view of your professor's teaching abilities:

1. Knowledge and enthusiasm for subject matter

The most important element to instructor success is a wide base of knowledge and a healthy enthusiasm for the subject matter they teach. Consider asking students to rank the following statements regarding their professor's knowledge and enthusiasm for subject matter by acknowledging that the professor is or does the following things:

• Is highly invested and enthusiastic about the course material they teach and convey a sense of excitement in the classroom
• Understands the general principles of their discipline
• Provides students with a clear overview of the discipline
• Can sufficiently and accurately answer student questions regarding their discipline and subject of expertise
• Bases curriculum and assignments around the most current developments in their field
• Stays current on their field of study, actively seeks out new material, and/or participates in professional research
• Shows continuous growth in their field of study and encourages students to pursue similar paths

2. Experience, skill, and creativity in the classroom

Effective instructors elevate their teaching abilities and experiential knowledge with skills and creativity in the classroom. A good professor should:

• Outline and effectively present the required materials, techniques, and skills needed to succeed.
• Clearly outline key course concepts and techniques in an organized manner.
• Encourage critical thinking by asking interesting, pressing, and challenging questions.
• Encourage active learning strategies in the classroom.
• Persistently monitor student progress toward learning goals in a variety of creative ways.
• Recognize and reach out to students having academic difficulties and offer assistance.

3. Clear student expectations and testing practices

Just as evaluating instructors is crucial to success, so is understanding how to best evaluate students. We recommend using the following metrics to gauge how well a professor lays out their student expectations and tests:

• Clearly communicates class and assignment expectations
• Clearly explains the writing expectations for the course Have clear standards of performance for course expectation
• Increase overall student understanding of course concepts
• Grades assignments fairly and in alignment with their expectations
• Grades assignments within a reasonable time frame
• Creates assignments consistent with the course's learning objectives
• Gives clear and accurate feedback about student performance on assignments
• Provides students with constructive criticism on projects and written assignments
• Uses a range of tools to assess student learning

4. Professionalism in the classroom and beyond

Whether meeting for office hours, labs, or research, professionalism extends outside of the classroom. It's essential instructors respect students as individuals and do the following things:

• Encourage the free pursuit of learning and academic freedom
• Give consistent constructive feedback on assignments
• Provide meaningful feedback for topics of research
• Provide meaningful ongoing guidance on course materials
• Answer students when questions arise concerning an assignment
• Advise students with problems with course material
• Identify students who are not well suited for the course and recommend alternative instruction or individualized learning approaches
• Continuously embody their institution's code of conduct

5. Overall teaching effectiveness

There are several criteria all instructors must embody to be overall effective teachers:

• Succeeds in creating an environment conducive to learning
• Is actively concerned with student progress and learning
• Is well prepared for every class session
• Stimulates class interest in the topic at hand
• Expects a high level of performance and makes it achievable
• Is an overall effective instructor for the course's material

6. Open feedback section

In addition to the criteria you've outlined in professor surveys, give students open space to mention what they enjoyed most about the course and how they think it should improve. It's essential that students understand how to evaluate their professor respectfully and that this space is required to promote growth. Students should also understand that their responses are anonymous so they feel safe sharing their honest opinions.

How to evaluate the feedback professors receive

As with any form of evaluation, the data professors glean from student evaluations can be a mixed bag. Students tend to evaluate a class subjectively based on their personal enjoyment or success in the class rather than what they've learned, making it easy for less effective teachers to receive great professor evaluations and good teachers to receive bad professor evaluations. While evaluating student surveys and analyzing trends, it's essential to remember the following:

• Grading: Studies have shown professors who give higher grades tend to receive better evaluations. This factor may motivate some professors to inflate or curve their grades and puts student ratings into question.
• Course content: Students tend to evaluate professors based on how much they enjoy the course, especially when students dislike the work involved or lack the ability to meet challenges.
• Demographic bias: Characteristics like race, gender, and age may contribute to how students rate their professors. For example, students are more likely to rank male professors higher than female professors, even when both teachers instruct the same course and evaluate students based on the same metrics. 
• Personality: Students frequently prioritize a professor's personality in course evaluations, especially in the case of female instructors. Regardless of actual performance, professors who are extroverted, open, and agreeable tend to get the best ratings. Introverted, unapproachable, or disagreeable professors are more likely to receive the worst feedback. 
• Discipline: Professors in certain academic fields tend to receive more positive reviews than in others. For example, students often rate humanities faculty more highly than their STEM counterparts simply because the course material was either more enjoyable or easier to grasp.

When trying to make sense of college instructor evaluations, several measures can help you gain more valuable insight. One approach is to base the reliability of the professor evaluations by prioritizing the responses of their top-performing students. Schools can also increase the value of student evaluations of college professors by administering them later in each student's career to see the true value of the class in retrospect.

Improving student evaluation accuracy and reliability

There are effective approaches you can take to increase the integrity and constructiveness of the evaluations you receive. Consider the following measures to increase the validity of student evaluations of professors:

• Consider student mid-course evaluations: If you're concerned about end-of-course evaluations, consider holding informal evaluations earlier into the course to see how each cohort of students is learning. The feedback from early course evaluations can allow professors to correct the course and focus on the areas students most struggle with.
• Provide anonymity: While anonymity can be a double-edged sword, it lets students be honest without worrying about potential repercussions to their grades.
• Word questions carefully: Leading questions introduce bias into evaluations and produce skewed results, which is why paying close attention to the language you use is so important for the most accurate feedback. Neutral language and the right answer format will help you get honest, valuable answers.
• Increase student response rates: Instructors receive more accurate and reliable evaluations when each one of their students completes end-of-course evaluations. Increase student participation by making them mandatory, sending reminder notifications, giving students bonus points, or even locking grades behind evaluations.
• Encourage constructive criticism: Students are more likely to give fair and accurate evaluations when they understand that the department expects respectful and constructive criticism. Faculty can show examples of constructive feedback if needed.
• Explain how student evaluations are used: Students provide better feedback when they realize department chairs and committees use feedback for promotions and tenure. Assure them the data they provide is valuable to the institution.
• Have students recall specific examples: Reduce bias and false statements by having students use specific examples alongside their criticisms. Examples may include feedback on presentation styles, learning modules, course expectations, grading protocol, and more.
• Ask closed and open-ended questions: Closed-ended questions give you quantifiable results for easy analysis, but open-ended questions are important for getting the context behind those answers. Asking a mix of both will help you get the most comprehensive responses.
• Provide evaluation criteria: Ensure a more fair assessment by giving students a clear set of standards they can use to evaluate the professor's performance. You can also apply the Likert Scale here to guide students in answering these questions.

Survey and evaluation tools

Watermark Course Evaluations & Surveys helps you use your student feedback to transform your campus and create more effective professors. Our course evaluations and surveys are specifically designed to meet the demands of higher education and its unique challenges. Watermark course evaluation software comes with the following survey and instructor evaluation tools:

• Create accessible survey options: Students can quickly respond to surveys with whatever equipment they have available, like their smartphones. Professors can set up reminders and alerts on students' devices and even require students to complete surveys to unlock their grades.
• Eliminate the need for data entry: Watermark automatically compiles professors' feedback so they can see trends and analysis without entering any data themselves. Instructors can say goodbye to hours of data entry, response chasing, and building reports. By implementing survey and evaluation software, your business can save money on labor that potentially offsets license costs and doubles response rates.
• Integrate with your existing technology: Our software integrates with major higher education providers including Canvas, Blackboard, D2L, and Moodle. Bossier Parish Community College even found they were able to integrate Watermark with Blackboard in less than one hour. With in-depth software integration, all your survey data can stay attached to the student, course, and faculty, and your response rates can rise to 80% or higher.
• Allow student voices to influence faculty development: The Watermark Faculty Success integration lets you include student evaluation responses in annual review cycles and make better decisions regarding faculty hiring and progression.
• Provide a 360-degree view of your institution: With the amount of data and insight gleaned from your surveys, your institution will be able to make better decisions. Our Course Evaluations & Surveys tool works across multiple languages and can be used for general surveys and reporting in addition to student feedback. You may even double your participation just by implementing our surveys.
• Offer a fast path to insights: Watermark takes the strain and guesswork out of survey collection with centralized and customizable evaluations. With our software, you'll minimize IT involvement, decentralize administration, and have an overall painless implementation. Improve feedback timeliness and get your evaluation insights to professors immediately after they're due with Watermark.

Watermark Faculty Success

Watermark professor evaluation tools are just one part of our transformative product suite. When you use Course Evaluations & Surveys, your intelligence will gather straight into Faculty Success to inform you on new faculty reviews. This means that faculty accomplishments will be front and center to help you make decisions regarding hiring and career progression.

Our Faculty Success solution is easy to use and lets you pull student evaluations, articles, and CV data into a thorough and accessible dossier. Reviewers can access all digitized evaluation materials from one secure login. Eliminate the need for endless physical evaluations and enable reviewers to access student evaluation materials from Faculty Success quickly.

See the bigger campus picture with Watermark

At Watermark, our solutions enable your administration to see how student evaluations play into your campus's bigger picture. Our goal is to help you get more accurate insights, increase evaluation responses, and greatly minimize the amount of time used on data entry. See the difference we can make for your professors and administration when you request a Watermark demo today.

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