The Complexities of SAIs

1. Strengths of SAIs:

   • Provide direct feedback from students on their learning experiences.
   • Highlight patterns and trends in teaching effectiveness over time.
   • Identify areas where instructors are excelling or may need improvement.

2. Limitations of SAIs:

   • Bias and Fairness: Research shows that SAIs can reflect biases based on an instructor’s gender, race, ethnicity, age, accent, or perceived authority rather than teaching quality.
   • Scope: Students are not always equipped to evaluate certain aspects of teaching, such as content expertise or course design.
   • Emotional Context: SAIs may be influenced by grades, course difficulty, or personal circumstances rather than instructional effectiveness.
   • Career Impact: Negative or biased evaluations can unfairly harm an instructor’s confidence, reputation, or opportunities for advancement.

Strategies for Interpreting SAIs

1. Create Distance:

   • Wait a few days after the semester ends before reviewing SAIs. This helps mitigate emotional responses and allows for a more objective perspective.

2. Don’t Take It Personally:

   • Recognize that SAIs often reflect students’ immediate perceptions rather than a holistic assessment of your teaching.
   • Separate constructive feedback from emotionally charged or irrelevant comments.

3. Analyze Patterns, Not Isolated Comments:

   • Look for recurring themes or trends across multiple evaluations rather than focusing on a single comment.
   • Identify areas where feedback aligns with your own teaching goals or self-assessments.

4. Distinguish Actionable Feedback:

   • Actionable Feedback: Comments that are specific, constructive, and within your control (e.g., “The instructions for assignments could be clearer”).
   • Nonactionable Feedback: Comments that are vague, unconstructive, or beyond your control (e.g., “I just didn’t like this course”).
   • Prioritize actionable feedback when considering course revisions.

5. Consider the Context:

   • Reflect on external factors that may have influenced evaluations, such as the course’s difficulty, online vs. in-person modality, or class size.
   • Align feedback with other sources of evidence, such as peer reviews, self-evaluation, or learning outcomes.

6. Mind Bias and Inequities:

   • Review the literature on biases in SAIs to better understand how these factors might influence your evaluations.
   • Advocate for institutional awareness and equity when SAIs are used for summative purposes.

Reflecting on SAIs

Additional Tips for Using SAIs

1. Ask for Contextual Feedback:

   • Consider adding your own questions to SAIs that align with your course goals or teaching practices. For example:
     • “What activities or assignments were most helpful for your learning?”
     • “What could I have done differently to better support your learning?”
   • These tailored questions often yield more relevant and actionable feedback.

2. Share and Discuss:

   • If appropriate, discuss feedback with a mentor, colleague, or teaching center staff to gain perspective and identify improvement strategies.
   • Consider peer observations or teaching portfolios to contextualize and supplement SAIs.

3. Prepare for Summative Uses:

   • When SAIs are part of performance reviews, include a reflective statement summarizing how you’ve engaged with the feedback to improve your teaching.
   • Highlight additional evidence of teaching effectiveness, such as peer reviews or learning outcome data, to provide a balanced perspective.

4. Take Pride in Progress:

   • Celebrate improvements and positive feedback as markers of your growth as an instructor.
   • Recognize that teaching is a continuous journey, and not every comment requires immediate action.

5. Mid-Semester Feedback Discussion

   • This is a service offered by the CTE in which our staff facilitate a confidential discussion with your students and get actionable feedback to share with the instructor.
   • Real-Time Course Adjustments: Mid-semester feedback provides instructors with valuable insights into how the course is progressing from the students’ perspective. This feedback enables timely adjustments to teaching methods, content, assignments, or assessments that might not be effectively meeting students’ needs or expectations. It allows instructors to address any emerging issues promptly and create a more tailored and effective learning environment.