E-mail to Your Friend(s)Print Friendly

Limelight on Students' Teaching Evaluation

Prof. Herbert W. Marsh, professor, Department of Education of the University of Oxford and the Centre for Positive Psychology and Education at the University of Western Sydney, was invited to host the University's 50th Anniversary Distinguished Lecture on 2 July. Entitled ‘Student Evaluation of University Teaching: Recommendation for Policy and Practice', the lecture attracted an audience of around 160, including CUHK staff and students, alumni, and members of the education sector.

Students' evaluations of teaching effectiveness (SETs) have been a topic of considerable interest and a great deal of research in universities all over the world. However, Professor Marsh pointed out that it is surprising that research conducted in the last decade has not done more to address the critical limitations previously identified to SETs. One of the observations is that the use of SETs is for personnel decisions rather than to improve teaching effectiveness. Also, it is opined that the feedback from students is potentially demoralizing to academics and does not lead to full implementation of programmes to improve teaching effectiveness. He also discussed the usefulness of SETs as part of a programme to improve university teaching and the necessity to conduct more intervention studies on SETs.