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Chris Connolly
EDUC 815
Central Maine

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Complaints about teaching at the undergraduate level are common and are made by students, administrators, faculty members, TAs, and even parents. Yet it is surprisingly difficult to determine whether these complaints are disgruntled grumbles or if they represent serious problems. Alternatively, praises can be heaped upon a professor and again, there is no clear determination as to whether the praise is simply recognition of popularity and likability or genuine excellence in the classroom. In higher education, academic freedom is encouraged, professors seek tenure, and these in themselves allow for extreme variations in teaching methods. This adds to the complexity of evaluation.

Yet the heavy responsibility of developing minds for the greater good of society demands that there is at least some acceptable prescription for institutions to ensure better college teaching.

What are the factors involved and what are their relative impacts on quality teaching at the college, undergraduate level?

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Evaluating a general standard for quality teaching is likely impossible. Much like determining what "fitness" or "health" looks like in a general society, there are a wide variety of variables and factors that impact how a professor teaches a particular class. Yet quality control remains an imperative for all institutions to weed out incompetent or unethical professors while retaining, developing, and encouraging professors engaged in good teaching.

Understanding the main factors and their degree of impact on quality teaching can illuminate better prescriptions for institutional quality control. Currently, three research threads emerge to help address this topic:

1. Theories of Learning, which are often in competition with one another
2. Student/Learner characteristics
3. Institutional Factors, which covers a wide variety of topics

By exploring these three general threads, a greater understanding of the complex - and adaptive - system emerges which allows for institutions to generate better approaches for quality control of professors and classroom performance.

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Academic Freedom - "The right to say what one thinks without thinking what one says."

Tenure - Guaranteed permanent employment after a probationary period.

Instructor Competencies - Skills required by the instructor to successfully transfer knowledge from the teacher to the student.

Scholarship - the research of questions that lead to the discovery and addition of knowledge to a particular field.

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The challenge of determining or evaluating "good teaching" is fraught with pitfalls. Relying on student evaluations can skew results where popular professors receive good ratings while providing little educational substance or students that undergo a more rigorous study regime harshly critique their instructor.

Senior faculty can often do classroom visits to observe, but these are mere snapshots that have little hope of capturing the entire picture of classroom performance that stretches over weeks and includes office hours, one-on-one-mentorship, and even online engagement. Having personally experienced this "snapshot" method of evaluation, I can attest an experience where the observer draws conclusions only supported by minimal data: much like writing a research paper based on only 1 or 2 sources!

Finally, there is the possibility that institutional power balances can impact classroom performance, with some faculty members allowed more freedom than others, for a variety of reasons.

All of these, and more perhaps, are worthy of research in order to gain a better understanding of how performances in classrooms are driven by factors and to what degree. A college education is expensive and time consuming; what are the institutional guarantees that the student is getting what they paid for?

"Next year I expect to give ordinary lectures well and lawfully as I always have, but no extraordinary lectures, for students are not good payers, as the saying is: All desire to know but none to pay the price. I have nothing more to say to you beyond dismissing you with God's blessing and begging you to attend the mass."¹

1. Petrus Peregrossi, who recounts what his professor, Odofredus, said to the class at the University at Bologna in the 13th Century. Story told in Haskins, C. (1990). The rise of universities, (19th Ed.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

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There is a large body of research on all three of these threads. In particular, relationships between thread #1 and thread #2 impact both as learning theories build upon learner characteristics and desired outcome.

Yet for all of the research, there is a gap in definitive prescriptions for evaluating good teaching at the college level, all of which seem to have fatal flaws: institutional emphasis on good teaching takes time away from faculty research, which is the road to promotion and tenure. Specialization in colleges limits the assessment ability of department chairs. The literature research highlights these among many others, which creates a gap on more definitive studies.

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Next Steps/ Future Direction of Research

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Next Steps/ Future Direction of Research

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The next step, especially since this effort is a switch from my previous effort, is to continue the literature review and refine the threads. Following this:

1. Definitively construct the specific research question and direction of the dissertation.

2. Complete the dissertation.

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How have the various theories of undergraduate learning impacted classroom performance by professors?

How have changes (real and perceived) in student/learner characteristics impacted classroom performance?

How have institutions addressed QC of classroom performances and what are the outcomes?

How has the education profession addressed good teaching as part of the professional ethic?

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"What Radcliffe [college] did give me, however, was an impetus. Part of that impetus came from great courses and great professors."
- Barbara Tuchman, 2-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History

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Chris - A paper out of UC Berkeley you may find interesting / useful.