With all the news about the quality of teachers in K-12, you'd expect a little news about the quality of teaching in universities. Not so. The evaluation of teaching does happen, albeit behind the scenes, with an emphasis on the privacy of the faculty member.
At the end of each course we teach, the students receive an email providing them with a link to an online survey about the quality of the course. (The paper versions are gone.) What happens to those surveys? The results are reviewed, course by course, by the Associate Dean, then forwarded to the Division Director, and finally to the faculty member. Faculty with good evaluations get a nice letter from the Director, and the others (I'm told) have a meeting with the director. All of this is routine and happens each semester.
On a much more infrequent basis, a more serious step is taken. When a faculty member is going up for promotion, another faculty observes the teaching and writes a report. This report is used in the promotion packet.
Last week I had an observer. I didn't do anything differently than previous weeks. We had a good discussion during the class and lots of thoughtful questions posed, most with no right or wrong answers. The students all selected one chapter written by different great minds in management and briefly presented on what they learned from the life story of that great mind. Students were animated and engaged. At the end of the class, the observer said "That was fun." I took this as a good sign.
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