Individual Fellow Initiatives

Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are one of the official means to gauge the performance and effectiveness of an instructor at higher-education institutions. They are often used for promotion/tenure decisions as well as to guide faculty into becoming effective instructors. But the question is whether, as currently implemented at UT Austin, SETs are reliable indicators of (a) effective teaching, and (b) long-lasting, impactful learning?

Project goal: 

Elevate excellence in the classroom through new strategies to understand, measure, and improve rigor in all courses

Project objectives:

Each class is designed and delivered with the expectation of students learning at high levels

Each student is supported so they can accomplish learning at high levels

Each student demonstrates learning at high levels

Outcome:

Large introductory physics courses at UT Austin typically rely on multiple-choice exams due to logistical constraints, including high enrollments and limited teaching assistant (TA) support. While recent instructional reforms have focused on student-centered pedagogies, assessment practices have lagged behind, limiting the alignment between how students are taught and how their learning is evaluated.

Mastery of the use and interpretation of statistical techniques requires a lot of practice. Similarly, statistics is only mastered with a lot of practice. However, instructors unfortunately only have a finite amount of time available to create an endless supply of new problems and associated answers. They also do not have an endless amount of time to provide hints to help students find their own way past their misconceptions. In addition, it is very difficult for students to receive immediate feedback to understand what they are doing and what they need to do.