Students have the option to reflect on the teachers’ instruction without fear of punishment because course evaluations are completely confidential and anonymous.
Student evaluations are formative when their purpose is to help faculty members improve and enhance their teaching skills.
[5] The teachers may require their students to complete written evaluation, participate in ongoing dialogue or directed discussions during the course of the semester.
Others have said that the typical way SETs are now used at most universities is demeaning to instructors[14] and has a corrupting effect on students' attitudes toward their teachers and higher education in general.
[17][18] A paper by Krautmann and Sander (1999) find that the grades students expect to receive in a course are positively related to SET scores.
[19] Isely and Singh (2005) find it is the difference between the grades students expect to receive and their cumulative GPA that is the relevant variable for obtaining favourable course evaluations.
[20] Another paper by Carrell and West (2010) use a data set from the U.S. Air Force Academy where students are randomly assigned to course sections (reducing selection problems).
Meanwhile, a 2017 lawsuit was filed on grounds of xenophobic discrimination in course evaluations at the University of Kansas, with Peter F. Lake, the director of Stetson University's Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy, suggesting this is no isolated incident.
However, similar to the economic literature other researchers outside of educational psychology have offered negative findings on course evaluations.
For example, some papers have examined online course evaluations and found them to be heavily influenced by the instructor’s attractiveness and willingness to give high grades in return for very little work.
[25][26] Another criticism of these assessment instruments is that largely the data they produce are difficult to interpret for purposes of self- or course-improvement, given the number of variables that can affect evaluation scores.
[28] Student-faculty engagement is offered as an explanation, where course level, instructor rank, and other variables lacked explanatory power.