My Thoughts about the "Best 300 Professors"
While I do appreciate the students who wrote positive
comments about me, and I'm sure that many (or even all) of the
Professors on the list are excellent teachers, I don't think too
much should be made of being selected one of the "Best 300 Professors".
Though I haven't seen the study design, I suspect it has many
problems. For example, I'd be surprised if the sample is either
random or representative. In fact, I'm not sure that they can
even guarantee that the students who evaluated me have ever taken
a course with me. As another example, I doubt that different
students at JMU use the same scoring/evaluation system, let alone
students at different universities, making it very difficult to
compare across universities.
Though I haven't seen the statistical analysis, I suspect it also
has many problems. For example, I can imagine many factors that
would bias whatever summary statistics they calculated. As another
example, they may not have calculated the rank order from the
"raw scores" (whatever they were) in an appropriate fashion.
One might argue that, given these concerns, I should not have
agreed to participate. I did give it a considerable amount of
thought and decided that JMU's reputation might be hurt if no JMU
faculty appeared on the list. So, I agreed to participate despite
my reservations. If universities nationwide had decided not to
participate, I wouldn't have participated. (I suspect that some
universities did, unilaterally, decide not to participate, though
I don't know this for a fact.)
That said, I take teaching very seriously and think I do a pretty
good job, both in and out of the classroom. I base my opinion on
years of "official" course evaluations (which have problems of
their own), conversations with current and past students,
conversations with other faculty, and self-reflection. In my
experience, the same is true of many of my colleagues at JMU and
elsewhere (including those who are on this list). I try to provide
my students with several different ways to learn the material in
my courses, and I think this helps many of them learn. I also try
to help them learn how to learn, so that they will be able to
continue to do so after they leave JMU. I'm happy that many of
them avail themselves of these opportunities and that many of them
both seem to learn the course content and become better learners.
I'm also happy that they seem to appreciate my efforts.
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