Bulletin No. 2, 2013

40   Chinese University Bulletin No. 2, 2013 Distinguished Lectures Student Evaluation of University Teaching 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. SETs have a solid research base stemming largely from research conducted in the 1980s. Professor Marsh gave an account of the trend and said that they are increasingly being used in universities throughout the world to assess teaching effectiveness by surveying the students on the courses and the instructors so as to improve teaching. Based on his research lasting 30 years, Professor Marsh concluded that SETs are multidimensional. They can measure different dimensions: the instructor’s enthusiasm, organization of course materials, group interaction, grading and the difficulty of the course, to name but a few. He said the debate about which components of teaching effectiveness should be measured has not been resolved in the education field. However, there is a consistency in those that are identified in responses to the most carefully designed instruments such as the indices mentioned above. ‘SETs are reliable and stable.’ Professor Marsh continued, ‘Given a sufficient number of students, SET reliability compares favourably with the best objective tests.’ In one of his longitudinal study, he found SETs scored by the same students at the end of a course and several years after graduation agreed very well with each other. Professor Marsh also discovered that there is zero relation between teaching and research in one of his research. He said many misinterpret this finding and jump to a conclusion which recommended that research and teaching should be separated to increase effectiveness. He rectified the misconception and explained that zero relationship didn’t mean all academics within those institutions are either researchers or teachers, but there can be as many excellent teachers and researcher, as there are excellent teachers, excellent researchers. The fundamental issue was what the institution wished the relation to be, and devising policies to enact this wish.