How to improve your teaching evaluations without improving your teaching

The current increased interest in evaluating the teaching of college and university faculty has made course evaluations even more important to the careers of academic faculty. The most important use of teaching evaluations is to guide instructors in revising courses and altering teaching methods to become more effective educators. A second use is becoming more frequent: comparing scores on teaching evaluations across faculty to make major personnel decisions, including hiring, firing, promotion, and tenure. The soundness of these decisions depends upon the validity of the evaluation instrument, and even the most reliable and consistent instrument can easily be compromised if administered inappropriately. Based on a review of the literature, I list 20 ways to compromise teaching evaluations and improve ratings without improving teaching.