When selecting Qualitative or Quantitative research to rate the excellence of professors I would say that the decision would have to be based on the type of class. For a class whose purpose is to teach the student how to learn I would say that qualitative factors would be more relevant. A good example would be History, or Psychology. While they do have facts and memorization they are primarily based upon subjective and view based interpretation. A good teacher in these topics should leave students wanting to know more and coming to their own conclusions about the topic. Interviewing the students about their interest in the topic and how that affected them after the class is a good way to gain this kind of information.
For hard sciences or other classes that are based upon memorization and retention of facts or formulas the grade averages might be a more reliable way to determine who is an excellent teacher. Therefore quantitative research should be used. Getting access to records and comparing the GPA in their class and doing comparisons to averages in standardized tests with their students vs those in other similar classes across the nation could provide a good way to find the teachers who are excellent in these topics.
Hi Jshornbaker. I thought you presented a great argument but I would also like to point out that Quantitative research is also frequently used particular when the students receive course evaluation surveys at the end of a semester from the History course they just completed which is a direct form of rating the excellence of that professor for that course you just completed.
Hi!
I agree that rating professors should depend on the kind of material they are teaching. Some areas should be more focused on the material the students are retaining, while others should be prompting students to research and come to their own conclusions.
Rating professors based on the grades their students are receiving is a helpful method in any area, but shouldn’t be the entire basis for the rating. I think that also asking students to rate the professors, in course evaluation surveys and/or on platforms like ratemyprofessors.com, is also important.
Maybe depending on the kind of class, either method could hold more weight in the evaluation?
The idea of evaluating teachers based on the grade that students receive in the course is interesting. I think it would certainly affect my choosing of courses if that information was disclosed to me. I saw a meme today about a teacher puffing up her class as very difficult and it being hard for students to pass. The other side of the meme said that the teacher is a bad teacher because the students don’t pass the course. I think this is a severe simplification of merits of teachers but courses that are difficult to pass may need to be taught in more effective formats or maybe the students need to ask more questions and say that aspects of the course are needlessly challenging.
And, yet, when I went through the tenure process, I had to discuss grade distribution for each semester. If one of my classes had a lot of A’s and B’s, I had to justify it.