Dive Brief:
- Colleges and universities are not doing enough to measure instructor effectiveness, and many administrators are often unaware that such measurements and models to gauge effectiveness exist, according to Stanford physics and education professor Carl Wieman in an interview with NPR.
- Wieman advocates for “active learning” approaches, where students must spend much of their class time on activities that are encouraging them to proactively consider and utilize the information they are receiving. Wieman believes such an approach can improve students’ understanding and retention.
- He expressed frustration that administrators, including university presidents and provosts, are often unaware that there are ways to measure teaching methods. He said that pressure must be kept on educators and administrators to ensure that learning at higher ed institutions was properly assessed.
Dive Insight:
If department chairs and deans mandate productive assessments of teacher effectiveness, it may not only help professors improve their approach, but can also serve as a new consideration criteria for promotion. Being able to offer empirical evidence for students, parents and counselors of exemplary teaching practices in a particular department or campus could also be a potential recruitment tool.
One major theme that arose out of the recent American Association of Community Colleges meeting was the idea that professors often receive little professional development around pedagogy, though they certainly could benefit. Some experts indicate that it can be difficult to get some professors interested in professional development, particularly part-time faculty members, but there are some indications that adjunct professors are interested in furthering professional development.