Student evaluations of teaching remain one of the most widely used tools for assessing instructional effectiveness in higher education. In many institutions, standardized student evaluation forms are administered at the end of a course, and the resulting scores play a significant role in faculty promotion, tenure decisions, and annual merit reviews. While student feedback can provide valuable insights into learners’ experiences, relying primarily on student-rated teaching scores presents several challenges. These limitations may lead to inaccurate or inequitable evaluations of faculty performance. This article examines structural factors that may influence student teaching ratings and suggests strategies to improve the fairness and usefulness of teaching evaluations.
Limitations of Student-Rated Teaching Evaluations
Unequal Teaching Roles
In many courses, especially those with multiple instructors, faculty members may have different roles and levels of responsibility. For instance, a course leader or primary instructor typically designs the course, communicates frequently with students, delivers most lectures, and manages grading and administrative tasks, while co-instructors may teach only a few sessions or specific modules.
Because students interact more frequently with the course leader or primary instructor, they are more likely to remember and evaluate that instructor more positively. Faculty members with smaller teaching roles may receive lower ratings simply because they had fewer interactions with students. In such cases, student evaluations may reflect exposure rather than actual teaching effectiveness.
Class Size Differences
Class size can also influence teaching evaluations (Myers, 2021). In smaller classes, instructors tend to have more direct interaction with students, which often leads to stronger relationships and more positive perceptions of the instructor.
In contrast, large lecture courses often limit opportunities for individualized interaction. Even highly effective instructors may find it difficult to achieve the same level of engagement in classes with hundreds of students. As a result, instructors teaching large classes may receive lower ratings than those teaching smaller courses, despite comparable instructional quality.
Program-Level Differences
Teaching evaluations may also vary across academic programs. For example, undergraduate students in Bachelor of Science in Nursing programs often have heavier course loads and more structured curricula. Their expectations for courses may differ from those of graduate students, who are typically more self-directed and motivated by professional advancement.
Graduate students often report higher satisfaction with instructors because they typically choose their programs voluntarily and pursue clear professional goals. In contrast, undergraduate students may experience higher stress levels and may attribute academic challenges to the instructor. Consequently, undergraduate courses may receive systematically lower teaching ratings than graduate courses even when instructional quality is similar.
Response Bias
Most teaching evaluations are voluntary surveys administered at the end of the semester. Response rates can vary widely across courses. When participation is low, evaluation results may not accurately represent the entire class (Cook et al., 2024). Students who had particularly positive or negative experiences may be more motivated to complete the evaluation. Additionally, students who receive lower grades may be more likely to submit evaluations as a way to express dissatisfaction. This response bias can skew results and produce ratings that do not accurately reflect the overall student experience.
Strategies for Improving Teaching Evaluation Systems
Given these limitations, institutions should consider adopting more comprehensive and evidence-based approaches to evaluating faculty teaching, to ensure its accuracy, fairness and effectiveness.
Using Multiple Measures of Teaching Effectiveness
One important strategy is to incorporate multiple sources of evidence when evaluating teaching performance (Zhao et al., 2022). Student evaluations should represent only one component of a broader evaluation framework. Peer observation is one commonly used approach. Experienced faculty colleagues can observe classroom teaching or review recorded lectures and provide feedback on instructional strategies, clarity of communication, and student engagement. Peer reviewers may also examine course materials to evaluate how well the course design supports learning objectives.
Teaching portfolios represent another valuable tool for evaluating instructional effectiveness. A teaching portfolio typically includes course materials, examples of assignments, evidence of student learning outcomes, and reflective statements about teaching practices. These materials allow faculty members to demonstrate how their instructional approaches support student learning and how they continuously refine their teaching over time.
Adjusting Evaluations for Teaching Context
Variables such as class size, course level, and program type can significantly shape students’ interactions with instructors and their subsequent evaluations (Myers, 2021). Therefore, student evaluation scores should be interpreted within the context in which teaching occurs. One possible approach is to compare instructors only with others teaching under similar conditions. For instance, large lecture courses might be compared with other large lecture courses rather than with small discussion-based classes. Similarly, undergraduate courses could be evaluated separately from graduate-level courses.
Clarifying Instructor Roles
Courses taught by multiple instructors present another challenge for traditional teaching evaluations. To improve evaluation accuracy, evaluation forms should clearly identify each instructor’s role and teaching responsibilities. Students should be asked to evaluate only those instructors with whom they had meaningful interaction. Institutions may also consider using separate evaluations for different course modules or instructional components. This approach allows each instructor to be evaluated based on the portion of the course they actually taught.
Increasing Student Response Rates
Low response rates are another common challenge associated with student teaching evaluations. One effective strategy is to allocate a brief period of class time for students to complete the evaluation survey. Even when evaluations are conducted online, setting aside a few minutes during class can significantly increase participation.
Another useful strategy is to demonstrate to students that their feedback has a meaningful impact. When instructors share examples of course changes made in response to previous feedback, students may feel their participation is valued and worthwhile. Some instructors also provide small incentives, such as modest extra credit opportunities, to encourage participation.
Incorporating Mid-Term Feedback
In addition to end-of-semester evaluations, institutions and instructors may benefit from incorporating mid-term feedback mechanisms. End-of-term surveys often provide feedback too late for instructors to make meaningful adjustments. By contrast, mid-term feedback allows instructors to identify concerns and address them while the course is still in progress.
Mid-term surveys often focus on students’ learning experiences, including the clarity of course materials, pacing of instruction, and effectiveness of teaching strategies. When instructors respond constructively to this feedback, they demonstrate responsiveness to student needs and a commitment to improving the learning environment.
Emphasizing Qualitative Feedback
Although numeric rating scales are easy to summarize and compare, they often provide limited insight into why students rated a course or instructor in a particular way. Written comments can provide richer information about students’ learning experiences and offer specific suggestions for improvement (Zhao et al., 2022). Providing guiding prompts, e.g., asking students what aspects of the course supported their learning or what improvements they would recommend, can lead to more useful responses.
Providing Training for Interpreting Evaluation Data
Finally, institutions should provide guidance for faculty committees responsible for interpreting teaching evaluation data. Promotion and tenure committees often rely heavily on numerical scores, even though small differences in ratings may not reflect meaningful differences in teaching quality. Training can help evaluators understand issues such as response bias, contextual influences, and normal statistical variation in teaching evaluation data.
Toward a More Balanced Approach
Student feedback will likely remain an important component of teaching evaluation in higher education. Students are uniquely positioned to comment on their classroom experiences, the clarity of instruction, and the overall learning environment. However, relying solely on student evaluation scores to judge teaching effectiveness can lead to misleading conclusions.
A more balanced evaluation system should combine multiple sources of evidence, consider contextual factors, and interpret student feedback carefully. By adopting a more comprehensive and scientifically grounded approach, institutions can create evaluation systems that are both fairer for faculty and more useful for improving teaching practices.
Ultimately, the goal of teaching evaluation should extend beyond accountability. When faculty receive meaningful and constructive feedback from multiple perspectives, they are better able to refine their teaching practices and enhance student learning outcomes.
Fang Lei, PhD, MPH, RN, is an assistant professor and Global Health Faculty Scholar at School of Nursing, University of Minnesota. She is an ambassador at the Center for Interprofessional Health, University of Minnesota, and served in the Sigma The tau Zeta chapter as a Governance Committee member. Her highest degree is Doctor of Philosophy in Nursing from the University of California Los Angeles. Lei’s research areas of interest are cancer prevention and care, cross-cultural research, and instrument development. She has worked with several journals as an editor and reviewer. She has published more than 40 research articles as the first author and is the author of 6 books. Lei has experience teaching in undergraduate and graduate level nursing courses for 9 years and published several research articles related to interdisciplinary education in peer-reviewed journals.
References
Cook, S., Watson, D., & Webb, R. (2024). Performance evaluation in teaching: Dissecting student evaluations in higher education. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 81, 101342.
Myers, S. (2021). Student evaluation of teachers. EBSCO Knowledge Advantage. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/education/student-evaluation-teachers
Zhao, L., Xu, P., Chen, Y., & Yan, S. (2022). A literature review of the research on students’ evaluation of teaching in higher education. Frontiers in psychology, 13, 1004487. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1004487
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