Summative Evaluation and Formative Feedback

In a still relevant AAHE Bulletin article on evaluation and teaching improvement, Weimer (1987) describes summative evaluation of teaching. She writes that summative evaluation is a judgment about teaching that is used to make a decision—a decision about promotion, tenure, or, even, teaching awards. A summative evaluation of teaching attempts to summarize the complex phenomena of teaching. It typically consists of global ratings of teaching, thus, reducing teaching to generalities. An example of summative evaluation is end-of-course student ratings. Student ratings instruments prompt students to rate six to ten aspects of teaching (e.g., organization, clarity, enthusiasm, etc.), and they ask students to make an overall, summarizing judgment of the instruction. Students’ ratings are then averaged and given to faculty as summaries of their teaching. The overall summary rating of instruction may even be shared with students and other faculty members. Such ratings are easily compared and then used for making decisions and answering questions of accountability. Individual faculty members have little control in the traditional summative evaluation process. They usually do not choose the instrument by which they are evaluated; they do not choose the time of the semester at which they are evaluated; nor do they choose the groups of people (e.g., students, department chairs, administrators, or fellow faculty members) to whom the results are d i s t r i b u t e d .