How useful are student ratings?

The book discusses the role of student evaluation of courses/instructors and points out the ineffectiveness of many questions commonly on course evaluation forms. Instead of asking students if the instructor was "engaging", which slants towards charismatic lecturers who many or may not be teaching well, the idea of seeking to assess what knowledge the students have gained from the course is more effective.

This causes me to re-think how I word evaluations for my training sessions. The book supports that student evals are important, but we should asked if the class or session "helped or encouraged them to learn" (p. 13) I like the example drawn from some Northwestern and Vanderbilt student rating forms:

• "Rate how much the teaching helped you learn."
• "Rate how well the course stimulated you intellectually."  (p. 14)

WOW!  That really raises the bar for instructors to consider and puts the focus where it should be.

What other survey questions could get at actual student learning/ effective teaching versus how engaging an instructor is?  What survey questions have you found most useful on your student evals?

What is "Excellence" in teaching?

To get to excellence in teaching, we have to consider learning - and what is real learning. Bloom's Taxonomy came to mind as I read in the introduction section about the higher levels of learning which occurred for students of the "excellent teachers". The study that was conducted, "looked for signs students developed multiple perspectives and the ability to think about their own thinking" (p. 10). In other words, the best teachers were developing the minds, not filling them.

The concept is seeking to develop "sustained influence" (p. 11) by guiding the students to their own thought processes.  It comes back to the proverb:

Although we recognize the universality of a proverb, how would we translate that in our mind to education and thought?

Give someone a thought and they think it that day;
Teach someone to think and they will come up with new thoughts for a lifetime.

What ideas do you have for how to re-write that proverb for teaching/learning/thinking?
I look forward to your comments/suggestions.