Student Opinion of Teacher 2013

I was only able to run my annual Student Opinion of Teacher Survey in my Physics 1 classes (four sections) this year.

Here's last year's post for a refresher/comparison.

This year's results:
Overall: B+ (3.43/4.00) [3.50/4.00 is required for an A–]

Top Five
Teacher seems to know subject matter	A	3.96
Teacher is prepared for daily class work	A	3.93
Students had opportunities to use advanced technology	A–	3.78
Teacher is in control of class	A–	3.78
Presentations (PowerPoints) were effective	A–	3.71
Bottom Five
Teacher is patient when student doesn't understand subject matter	B–	2.62
Teacher is willing to give extra help	B–	2.75
Teacher explains subject matter clearly	B–	2.77
Did you receive as much individual attention as you needed	B–	2.77
What was your level of participation	B–	2.87

Complete Summary

A multicolor chart representation:

Rio Phyz student opinion of teacher survey

I have administered a student opinion of teacher survey at the end of first semester nearly each year I've taught. Initially the survey was an item-by-item duplicate of the survey used at Ann Arbor Huron High when I did my student teaching there. I modified it a few years ago.

The current form can be found here. Students are told of the form at the beginning of the final exam period and asked to complete the survey after turning the final in. They are also told that I will not look at them until final grades have been submitted.

The first half of the survey consists of 24 statements that invite students to offer a rating on a 5-point scale. The second half of the survey consists of open-ended prompts that invite students to write out short responses.

Here's how I did on the first half among Physics 1 students. (Click to embiggen.)

Of course, it's more fun to look at a graphical representation (or two).

Here's a period by period comparison among the Physics 1 classes. There is no question 25; column 26 shows the average for each period. (Click to embiggen.)

Here's a comparison between the opinion in Physics 1 and AP Physics. (Click to embiggen.)

Here's a run-down of my Top-5 and Bottom-5 scores. (Click to embiggen.)

One's instinct is to defend against the perceived attacks represented by the low-scoring statements. But I can't be too unhappy overall. My lowest-averaging item comes in well above the midpoint grade of 2.0.

I would ask that gentle readers resist any temptation to judge too harshly, especially if they are teachers who have never administered such a survey. I would encourage colleagues to run such a survey in their own classes. The results may be better than you expect; perhaps better than you would grade yourself. I do recommend running it only at the end of first semester.

All tolled, I tend to hover somewhere around 3.27 (B+). This year's score was higher, so I'll enjoy a smile for a while behind that.

Return of the Student Opinion of Teacher Survey

High school teachers in the college town of Ann Arbor were required to undergo anonymous student evaluation at the end of each semester back when I did my student teaching there. The Ann Arbor School District developed a generic Likert scale and open-ended questionnaire that allowed students to rate teacher performance. The front of the questionnaire was devoted to 24 Likert (five-point) scale performance assessments. The back was devoted to open-ended prompts.

Students were not to include their names on the surveys. Completed surveys were collected by a student in the class and delivered to the teacher's evaluating administrator before the teacher could see them. The teacher could not access the completed surveys until semester grades had been turned in.

I brought the form with me to Sacramento. San Juan Unified had no such instrument or program. I was too chicken to use it my first year. In retrospect, I have reason to believe the results would have been much better than I expected. Oh well.

I started using it my second year, 1987-88. I was knocked out by how kind the students were in their assessment of my performance. It might have helped that I was young and they could see that I really was trying. It didn't hurt that Rio's Class of '88 was a truly exceptional group. (I perceived it even then, but my perception was verified by more veteran teachers at the time.)

I continued to administer the survey until 2006. In the early years, I learned a thing or two. And I changed a thing or two about how I conducted the class. But after a while, the annual results started to merge into a certain sameness. My stock would rise or fall within a certain range. The comments--good and bad--changed little from year to year. I lost interest.

I revived the old form this year. To make it somewhat interesting and useful to me, I changed some of the questions.

Here is the survey instrument.

Here are my results. (The graphs will be meaningless without the instrument; the graphs don't show the text of the questions.)
1. Summary Graph by Period (Physics 1 only)
2. Summary Graph (Physics 1 and AP Physics 2)
3. The Data