ARE TEACHING EVALUATIONS A NECESSARY EVIL?

ABOUT T IM ET HE NEW SLET T ER OF T HE

SOCIET Y FOR AM ERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY'S T EACHING ARCHAEOLOGY INT EREST GROUP

Volume 1 Issue 1 | March 2017

Perhaps no topic related to teaching is as controversial as teaching evaluat ions. Nearly every instructor has experienced the st ing of a negat ive evaluat ion, while some have received latent or blatant ly racist or sexist comments on our evaluat ions. Personally, I have received as many student comments about my choice of clothing as my course reading select ions. In addit ion, students may comment on the instructor?s personality as much as if not more than their actual teaching. A survey of my own teaching evaluat ions would almost certainly reveal ?nice? as the word used most frequently by students to describe me. While comments about my ?niceness? are superficially good for the ego, they tell me nothing of value about my abilit ies as a teacher, how to improve my course, or what students actually learned. Beyond anecdotal dissat isfact ion with teaching evaluat ions, however, lie several crit ical quest ions: Are teaching evaluat ions valid measures of student learning? What, if any, role should evaluat ions play in personnel decisions such as tenure? Do instructors actually learn enough from teaching evaluat ions to improve their teaching or course content?

A series of recent studies have taken a deeper look at recent and historical data about teaching evaluat ions; the results suggest

that student evaluat ions of teaching, or SETs, are deeply flawed and in mult iple ways. The Chronicle of Higher Education described one study out lining the high level of bias in certain circumstances against female instructors in SETs (link). The study suggests that bias against female instructors is at t imes so strong that there is no way to

correct for it , with serious implicat ions for the use of teaching evaluat ions in personnel decisions. Another Chronicle piece discusses a study demonstrat ing there is no correlat ion between high scores on SETs and student learning (link), calling into quest ion how teaching evaluat ions might actually help instructors improve.

So if SETs can be flawed or biased, why bother? Some instructors, of course, like SETs and find student feedback in any forum valuable. Others may feel they have no choice, as SETs are required for personnel matters. One administrator at Rice University points out that while SETs have their flaws, we shouldn?t abandon them altogether, as we haven?t yet come up with a better system (link).

That is not to say that some have not tried alternat ives. In fact, there are many resources for instructors looking to move away from rigid, quant itat ive SETs. The University of Pennsylvania?s Center for Teaching and Learning provides its instructors with customizable open-ended feedback forms, with specific versions for teaching assistants and faculty. These quest ions are focused more on student learning and course content rather than instructor ?performance? (link).

Staff at the Center for Teaching Excellence and Faculty Development at the University of Massachusetts Amherst also facilitate focus groups with students around the mid-semester point. The facilitator then meets with the instructor to discuss student feedback and suggested course adjustments, offering faculty the opportunity to respond to student concerns or challenges before the end of the semester (link). Regardless of the forum, as scient ists we should understand that SETs alone are not sufficient for evaluat ing teaching for tenure or promotion. At most, SETs shuld be one data point among many providing information about student experiences and an instructor's teaching abilit ies.

If you have used an alternat ive teaching evaluat ion model or have product ive suggest ions for how to evaluate teaching for personnel decisions, please email us. We will be sure to pass along some of our favorites.

TEACHING-FOCUSED SESSIONS AT THE 2017 SAAS

FORCE OR FINESSE

All right class, let 's talk DENTISTRY! Oh, I know, I know, that 's not the point of this show, but have you seen the ways, and tools of that place            where the ultimate goal is to just fix your face!

What 's the ultimate goal of your dig?            The research question: it factors quite big, but there are picks & hammers, needles & cotton,            scoopers & scrapers for things fresh, and things rotten. At a site you might find both a backhoe and brush:            is the matrix component of clay or of mush? At the dentist or dig, is it force or finesse?            At the dentist or dig, the answer is "yes."

What 's yer purpose, yer timeline, the context, yer budget? The first day, the last day? Lunch time! ?Can y? nudge it? We're just meters away, this find makes my career;            look, just blast through this level, I'll buy you a beer.? Of course theorists might say you screen every last grain, but sometimes yer pushing to get out of the rain. Generally said, you take time, use finesse,            but sometimes to salvage at all takes duress!

Yeah, once there was that dig in Peru,            we expected some weeks yet before we were through. Each burial found, we recovered with care? So much information in grave-goods, teeth and hair! One morning, a shovelbum left the ruins for a ... pee.   And sighted a crack 'long the wall t 'ward the sea. That same wind that had covered our site with the sand, could blow down that wall on all diggers at hand. We needed to finish, well, recover then re-cover.           

Each person transformed from artíst to mere "shov?ler." We stowed up those brushes, toothpicks, changed gears; Yet those careful-gained samples, we'll still study for years.

Ryan once called for a saw on the dig,            exposing a stairway, hit a root- 'bout yay big. I wasn't far off in a grid, that same site,            when thinking I faced a similar plight, I called for the saw, was poised to cut through            when the dig-boss walked by & screeched "whoa, whoa, stop you!" That 's not a root, but a beam at the foot of a door.            (That 's the job of a boss, to always be sure). I went from a saw, down to trowel, and from trowel down to brush            and from brush down to syringe--gentle air in a puff. Good thing I hadn't cut that floor-beam away,            it harbored a coin at the end of the day, that coin was the key that tied in to cigars, bought a city away,            but cigars were forbidden in that church back?n the day. Those moments of care made quite a big difference, the ties to that coin led to valuable inf?rence.

At the end of the day every crew chief will say: force or finesse, the answer is YES.

By Connie Ericksen presented at TAIG's First Annual Teaching Slam at the 2017 SAA annual meeting in Orlando

Want to hear Connie perform her piece? Listen HERE

Join us in Vancouver for t he 2nd Annual Teaching Slam on Fr iday March 31st f rom 7-8:30pm . If you would l ike t o

give a 3-m inut e present at ion, em ail us before 3/15 t o sign up and for m ore det ails. We hope t o see you t here!

Thursday March 30th

8:00-11:00am: Methods and Models for Teaching Digital Archaeology and Heritage

3:00-5:00pm: Assessment in Archaeology Educat ion: Project Archaeology Research

6:00-8:15pm: Teaching Archaeology

Friday March 31st

7:00-8:30pm: 2nd Annual Teaching Slam

Saturday April 1st

2:00-4:00pm: Hands on Teaching: Archaeological Act ivit ies to Engage Students and Enliven Classrooms

DEAR TAIG

WHO WE ARE

Kat ie Kirakosian EMAIL

Universit y of Massachuset t s Am herst

Founding Co-chair , 2015-2017

"How do we get students to shake things up and worry less about [their] grade, [and] more about learning and experience?" Tweeted by @Digitalarchaeo on August 17, 2016

Great quest ion! One thing you might consider is to experiment with assignments that will actually allow deep learning and celebrate student 's experiences (i.e. experient ial learning). If you craft assignments that challenge them on these fronts, then you show that you are working towards accomplishing these goals. Things like journaling assignments and essays that ask students to reflect on the experience of a certain act ivity after the fact, leads to higher order thinking skills (HOTS). For example, creat ing a series of three assignments which starts by having students understand a key concept, then apply that concept, and finally evaluate their applicat ion of that concept, might accomplish your end goal.

I am also a big fan of creat ing learning experiences that students might not expect and push them to think outside of the box. When teaching an archaeology class several years ago, I had students learn the key concepts first (i.e. strat igraphy, art ifacts, ecofacts) and then I asked them to apply what they learned to a hypothet ical archaeological site by excavat ing vacuum bags (Kirakosian 2014). From here, students ended the course by reflect ing on the experience

through poster presentat ions, which specifically had them reflect on the semester-long vacuum bag lab. Through clear guidelines, there posters had to address the following:

- How did this project challenge you to relate archaeological method and theory to modern human behavior?

- Did this help you relate to the field of archaeology? - What were the challenges of this work? - How does this change your out look on modern human

behavior?

As always, any learning experience that you create should have a well thought out rubric. Making rubrics is a process and, when done well and used as intended, helps immensely when grading. Always be sure to share rubrics well in advance to help your students succeed. I even urge my students to self-evaluate their work against the rubric before they submit, to help catch anything they might have missed.

Reference Cited

Kirakosian, Kat ie 2014. Trash to Treasure: Experimental Pedagogy Using the Everyday. International Journal of Education and Social Sciences 1(5):78-89. Accessible online here.

Elizabet h Schar f EMAIL

Universit y of Nor t h Dakot a

Co-chair (elect ), 2017-2019

Heidi Bauer -Clapp EMAIL

Universit y of Massachuset t s Am herst

Founding Co-chair , 2015-2017

Connect t o TAIG t hrough

Em ail TAIG HERE

GET INVOLVED!

1. Em ail us a suggest ion of som et hing t hat we should spot l ight in t he newslet t er .

2. Em ail us a quest ion or issue for our "Dear TAIG" sect ion.

3. Em ail us if you would l ike t o w r it e a m ain st ory.

Lark in Napua Hood EMAIL

Pennsylvania St at e Universit y

Co-chair (elect ), 2017-2019