Note: this document is a work in progress. FEC, FPC, TLC, and the JEDI committee have asked the HHMI REWARD committee to look at the role of course evaluations and other methods of assessing teaching effectiveness. The REWARD committee wants to involve the faculty in this conversation through the 2023-24 academic year. This document will, therefore, be developed further after the HHMI REWARD committee and the faculty have had further conversations on how to assess teaching and what role, if any, course evaluations should play.
The primary role of a faculty member at Kalamazoo College is to teach and mentor students, providing an environment that prepares them to understand, live successfully within, and provide enlightened leadership to their world. Faculty members contribute to the curriculum in different ways based on their expertise and the needs of the department and the College. The contract letter specifies the initial expectations, although these may evolve over time. Teaching, of course, is likely to intersect with the other dimensions of our professional work, including advising and mentoring, professional engagement, and service.
In the review process, FPC begins with and gives emphasis to the following questions in relation to teaching:
- What is the candidate’s contribution to the curriculum (departmental/programmatic)?
- What choices has the candidate made about course content and pedagogy to meet learning outcomes and create an inclusive learning environment?
- How does the candidate’s teaching portfolio (i.e., submitted syllabi and other relevant materials) offer evidence of their teaching effectiveness?
Through the Personal Statement, Department Letter, Faculty Letters (solicited by the Provost Office), and, at the tenure and promotion reviews, the Advocate Letter and External Review Letters, we look to the file to provide a full picture of the candidate’s contributions from those with expertise in curriculum, content, and pedagogy as well as student voices. As literature on the assessment of teaching consistently underscores, the ability to evaluate content and those strategies to engage students in the learning comes from those trained in the field and/or knowledgeable of the institution, its students, and its learning outcomes. Moreover, we also expect that, at each review stage, the file will include reflections on teaching drawn from class visits by the Chair (and/or someone in the department or division) and by the Advocate (at tenure and promotion).
On the Personal Statement
The Personal Statement provides an opportunity for the instructor to set out their overall teaching philosophy, goals for various courses, and pedagogical approaches, including how they provide an inclusive and supportive environment to make their courses effective for all students. The statement should not be merely a list of activities, but a narrative that frames the faculty member’s approach. To provide a curricular perspective, the statement might address how the courses they teach, especially those they have proposed, developed, or modified, fit into the curriculum for the major or the liberal arts curriculum of the College and/or foster student development and future aspirations. A discussion of content and pedagogy might include how the instructor works in the lab, engages in civic engagement, or incorporates new work in the field. To address teaching effectiveness, the Personal Statement and supporting file should provide evidence that courses engage students, advance their understanding of content and processes, and encourage them to learn more. This may include personal reflections on involvement in teaching training (at the College and/or beyond), on published scholarship on teaching and learning, and/or on student perspectives drawn from end-of-term self-reflections (e.g., final course assignments, structured reflections, and/or course evaluations).
On Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility
What promotes an inclusive learning environment may vary by department and by course. It may mean representing historically under-represented groups in course content; it may mean taking into account various learning styles, degrees of preparation, and family college history; it may mean thematizing or exploring issues of inclusion in course content; it always means demonstrating sensitivity to all identities in the classroom, including through policies listed on the syllabus and in practices such as finding respectful ways to invite and use individual-identified pronouns. FPC is mindful that content-based inclusivity may be more available for some courses than for others and will take a holistic approach to thinking about the candidate’s work in this area, considering the complete set of courses the candidate offers and all areas of their work that might promote an inclusive learning environment.
FPC is also eager to hear how candidates theorize and exemplify inclusivity in ways not explicitly listed or contemplated here. In every case, candidates should be thoughtful about how issues of inclusivity apply to their discipline and courses, and department mentors should look for ways to discuss the candidate’s approach to inclusivity as part of their mentoring about teaching.
Further (non-exhaustive) examples of work that fosters an inclusive learning environment:
- Expanding coverage of your field to include more work by authors, artists, scholars, and researchers from historically under-represented groups and/or more content areas about historically under-represented or historically disadvantaged groups (e.g. a course on Middle Eastern History).
- Consulting the literature on strategies to promote inclusivity in your discipline and using those practices in your classroom.
- Theorizing and discussing the role of power in your course topics.
- Theorizing and discussing the differential impact of work produced in your field on different groups.
- Being notably accessible/available/approachable to students.
- Using pedagogical strategies like scaffolding or clickers, which allow professors to see quickly in a learning or assignment process when students might be struggling.
- Putting policies on your syllabus that recognize students who may need accommodations.
- Promoting resources in the Learning Commons (Writing Center, Biology and Chemistry Center, etc.) as useful for students of all abilities.
- Finding a respectful way to learn and use individual-identified pronouns.
- Attending workshops offered by, or seeking advice from, the Office of Advising, the Counseling Center, TLC, ARCUS, and the Center for Civic Engagement regarding ways to promote an inclusive learning environment or to help students from historically underrepresented groups and applying those concepts to your teaching and advising.
On Course Evaluations
To get a full sense of teaching effectiveness, it is also important to consider the perspectives of those who have been in a class from beginning to end and for whom instructors develop course content and pedagogy for the aim of meeting departmental and college-wide learning outcomes.
Course evaluations, then, offer an opportunity for instructors to identify how students are seeing their choices (and to reflect upon them) and for FPC to get another view of a candidate’s teaching. On the other hand, research shows that student evaluations are flawed documents that cannot be relied upon as unbiased, objective evidence of teaching effectiveness and should not be used as a primary instrument for evaluating teaching effectiveness, especially in relation to reappointment, tenure, and promotion. As noted in “Course Feedback as a Measure of Teaching Effectiveness,” “Students are well-positioned to speak of their satisfaction with their experience in a course (e.g., difficulty of content, engagement, or boredom) but are much less capable of assessing an instructor’s teaching quality, effectiveness, and breadth of knowledge and scholarship.“
In evaluating teaching effectiveness, FPC reads the course evaluations in the context of the candidate’s personal statement, the department letter, course materials and other letters. In particular, FPC might ask:
- How has the candidate accounted for and reflected upon student perspectives?
- When appropriate, how has the candidate demonstrated effective revisions to a class based on formal and informal student feedback during the term and at the end of the term? This iterative process can serve the individual instructor, their students, their department, and the College as a whole.
Because of the limitations of course evaluations, especially when it comes to assessing teaching for the purposes of reappointment, tenure, and promotion reviews, the Faculty Personnel Committee is committed to begin each academic year reviewing recent scholarship on course evaluations as well as other implicit biases.