IDEA Editorial Note # 1 • Response to “ A Better Way to Evaluate Undergraduate Teaching ”

In the January/February issue of Change, Carl Wieman argues, in “A Better Way to Evaluate Undergraduate Teaching,” the current methods of evaluating teaching effectiveness in higher education lack validity and do little to offer the means for improvement. He proposes an alternative based on an inventory of instructor selfreported teaching practices, which are suggested by education research to be associated with student learning. As researchers for a non-profit organization that seeks to improve learning in higher education through research, assessment and professional development, we are delighted to see more researchdriven efforts on developing instruments for teaching evaluation. Nevertheless, we regretfully find Wieman’s critique of student ratings of instruction (SRIs), which he refers to as “student course evaluations,” to be a limited perspective. In this article we review and respond to Wieman’s critique, based on extensive research on validity and reliability of student ratings. To contribute to the mission of designing better ways to evaluate teaching, we also introduce a comprehensive system of faculty evaluation—widely supported by research and users—that includes SRIs as one of multiple measures of teaching effectiveness. In this system, evaluation is no longer considered just an endof-a-course routine that instructors have to perform, but instead seen as an ongoing developmental process that requires triangulation of multiple sources of evidence.