Online Students Give Instructors Higher Marks If They Think Instructors Are Men
For Immediate Release
A new study shows that college students in online courses give better evaluations to instructors they think are men – even when the instructor is actually a woman.
“The ratings that students give instructors are really important, because they’re used to guide higher education decisions related to hiring, promotions and tenure,” says Lillian MacNell, lead author of a paper on the work and a Ph.D. student in sociology at NC State. “And if the results of these evaluations are inherently biased against women, we need to find ways to address that problem.”
解决学生是否女性instructo法官rs differently than male instructors, the researchers evaluated a group of 43 students in an online course. The students were divided into four discussion groups of 8 to 12 students each. A female instructor led two of the groups, while a male instructor led the other two.
但是，这位女教练告诉她的一个在线讨论小组，她是男性，而男教练告诉他的一位在线小组他是女性。由于在线团体的格式，学生从未见过或听到他们的教练。
At the end of the course, students were asked to rate the discussion group instructors on 12 different traits, covering characteristics related to their effectiveness and interpersonal skills.
麦克内尔说：“我们发现，学生认为是男性的教练在所有12个特征上都获得了更高的评分，而不管教练是男性还是女性。”“实际男女教师的评分之间没有区别。”
In other words, students who thought they were being taught by women gave lower evaluation scores than students who thought they were being taught by men. It didn’t matter who was actually teaching them.
The instructor that students thought was a man received markedly higher ratings on professionalism, fairness, respectfulness, giving praise, enthusiasm and promptness.
麦克内尔说：“及时度等级的差异是讨论的一个很好的例子。”两位讲师同时对课堂作品进行了分级，并同时返回了学生。但是教练的学生认为男性的评分为4.35。教练学生认为女性的评分为3.55。”
The researchers view this study as a pilot, and plan to do additional research using online courses as a “natural laboratory.”
“We’re hoping to expand this approach to additional courses, and different types of courses, to determine the size of this effect and whether it varies across disciplines,” MacNell says.
纸，“What’s in a Name: Exposing Gender Bias in Student Ratings of Teaching，” 12月5日在线发布Innovative Higher Education。合着者是威斯康星大学拉克罗斯大学的Adam Driscoll博士和北阿拉巴马大学的Andrea Hunt博士。Driscoll和Hunt获得了北卡罗来纳州的博士学位。
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Note to Editors:The study abstract follows.
“What’s in a Name: Exposing Gender Bias in Student Ratings of Teaching”
Authors: Lillian MacNell, North Carolina State University; Adam Driscoll, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse; and Andrea N. Hunt, University of North Alabama
Published: Dec. 5,Innovative Higher Education
DOI: 10.1007/s10755-014-9313-4
Abstract:Student ratings of teaching play a significant role in career outcomes for higher education instructors. Although instructor gender has been shown to play an important role in influencing student ratings, the extent and nature of that role remains contested. While difficult to separate gender from teaching practices in person, it is possible to disguise an instructor’s gender identity online. In our experiment, assistant instructors in an online class each operated under two different gender identities. Students rated the male identity significantly higher than the female identity, regardless of the instructor’s actual gender, demonstrating gender bias. Given the vital role that student ratings play in academic career trajectories, this finding warrants considerable attention.
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LOL at all the comments denying the existence of sexism
每个人都是平等的，社会上没有问题，别再分裂了！哈哈哈
Instead of saying “the results must be false because of small sample size”, we should say “how interesting, let’s try this with a larger sample size and see if the results still hold”.
你们批评教练没有being double-blinded, consider the promptness rating. The homework was returned at the same time.
Yikes if I have an N of less than 1000 for this kind of loosy goosy study- I would be embarassed to talk about it. Woah!
What study would you run? Keep in mind that social science research (especially with human subjects) takes a long time to complete. They’re not experimenting with flies here…
另外，当尼尔·巴勒特（Neil Barlett）博士发现所谓的惰性气体（尤其是Xenon）实际上不是惰性并可能发生反应时，这是多么“宽松的黏性”？我敢肯定，人们认为他很疯狂，但后来他真正彻底改变了化学家如何看待贵重气体。最好的研究通常从一些疯狂的想法开始，但是通常，这个想法在实际上非常有趣的事物中发展。
‘Bill’ says: “A press release with a sample size of four? Is this what we now consider sociological research? I notice there are two female authors and one male author. From this I infer that NCSU is sexist against men. Sample size of 3.”
账单can’t read. There were 43 students divided into 4 sections. You could view the treatment groups as those where the instructor was not labeled by his or her actual name, and the control groups as those where they were. That’s about 10-11 subjects per section, or 20-22 subjects in each of treatment and control groups. That’s not 4 subjects, Bill.
I won’t say that this study is perfect by any means, but pooh-poohing an article written by women without having the grace to actually read it is hardly scholarly behavior. It would appear you exhibit exactly the type of bias these authors are describing.
This is a very interesting research topic. It did not mention from what I could read though, how many of the students were 18-20 year old young girls who of course would prefer an imaginary, potentially handsome male professor (if they were heterosexual girls) vs. 18-20 guys. Does the rest of the study give this detail?
I think it is worthy of much more consideration. How to overcome it is even more important to understand. It may not be possible.
通常，教师评估尚未接受有效性，信誉或可靠性的测试。我希望我们能知道该研究是否专注于实际衡量其应衡量的仪器。
如何将这些数据与“ X教授”的小组进行比较，他们从未被告知是否是他或她？那个老师会得到什么样的分数？这种类型的结果是否会在教授面对面与在线工作的教授在教室中复制？我认为这项工作表明需要进行更多的研究，但实际上并没有证明任何事情 - 似乎更像是一个更大的难题。
Ashley, this is a great idea! If you have a large class and never reveal the gender of the professor (perhaps by using the name of an organization so that the students are less aware that they are being studied), then you could do the evaluations and ask at the very end about the perceived gender of the professor and look for patterns of scores where the perceived gender was indicative of a favorable score.
I’m not sure that I agree. Students like to imagine that they know something about the personal life of the faculty member. If the gender of the faculty member were anonymous, it would be impossible for the student to feel a connection to the faculty member because so many things are triggered by knowing a name and some details about another. My guess would be that they rate anonymous instructor lower than male of female.
I agree that this study is way too small a sample size to be usefull on its own. However it does raise the important issue of teaching assesment in universities. In my institution student feedback is the only measure of teaching performance. Hiring and firing decisions are based on it. Strangely enough there is a correlation between those students who get the best marks and those who give high marks on teaching feedback scales.
did the study really have only four instructors and the same two claiming to be male? if so then it would be very easy for the two ‘male’ instructors to be truly better. Similar findings are replicated elsewhere, so I believe the findings, but as a stand-alone study this lacks validity. it’s a good pilot study, perhaps, but it definitely needs follow up.
How many men and women were in each group?
由于学生收到了讲师的电子邮件，因此他们很容易找到教师的性爱。很多问题！！！
what was the gender ratio of the subjects? It would be interesting to know, for example, if male students were more likely to give higher ratings to perceived male instructors, etc.
是的，保持良好的工作。正是我们许多人长期以来一直怀疑的事情。我也很想知道年龄，种族和残疾如何影响“评估”的结果。我敢打赌，一个年轻的，外国的女学者比她的年龄更大，土著，男性同行（当然，只要他还不太老），就比她的年龄或更年轻，土著，男性对手要建立自己的认知权威。
As someone who has spent much time in academia, I strongly urge you to investigate teaching styles. Even a feminist such as myself, preferred male instructors and found this alarming. Why? They were easier to deal with, fretted less about the small stuff, usually were better about organizing the course, and consistent with their feedback. Some female instructors had those characteristics too, but I found them most often in males.
Very interesting, it’s apparent that some people prefer men to women.
And now I have enough evidence that you only publish positive feedback. Amazing – on the same page that you promote your study of biased student responses, you bias the responses!
Jane, hush until you have all your facts.
Perhaps one improvement to the method would be to introduce the fiction that a woman teaches the first half of the course and a man teaches the second half of the course. That really more directly gets at the biases of the students more directly.
This study exposed yet another reason why teaching evaluations are worse than worthless.
你的结论是基于sampl太小e size. Do your homework and spend a year getting more data. Readers must feel that you got the result that you wanted, so you stopped. We try to teach students to wait and publish only what is statistically meaningful, and there are mathematical rules that define meaningful.
I totally agree with you James, I know they said it was a pilot study but I just don’t think nc state should post about it until some more research is done. That’s journalism for ya.
You are almost correct. There aren’t “mathematical rules” per se that define what meaningful is, as those rules are mathematical theorems and axioms… I believe you are intending to say “statistics”, which actually does define what is statistically significant. And this isn’t case of “to-may-to, to-mah-to” – the two fields are pretty distinct, even though there is considerable overlap.
That being said, just because something is not statistically significant doesn’t mean that it’s not meaningful. There’s lots of research that’s published where the null hypothesis isn’t rejected. That doesn’t mean that this research is any less valuable than studies that did reject their null hypotheses. Also keep in mind that there are standard procedures when working with small sample sizes. In fact, people research this and teach methodology courses on how to do it. Further, a lot of research begins with small sample sizes because it’s super experimental. Once you get a general idea, only then can the study be ramped up.
As for this study, they could have not written an immediate release, but remember that when an exciting result is found (e.g. the Higgs boson being discovered), researchers will want to share this with others in the academic community. I don’t think you can fault these guys for sharing.
I am not surprised by the findings. Gender inequity is more subtle than is used to be but it is alive and well. The young women I meet at a local college are very aware of it and openly speak about it.
Entirely true.
I want to thank the authors of this study for looking into one of the everyday challenges that female instructors face in the classroom. Gender bias is pervasively present and manifests in multiple ways such as students’s resistance to address female professors by their academic title, engage in original teaching approaches, and simply accept us, female profs, as figures of authority.
如果他们根据如此小的样本量发布结论，那么受人尊敬的机构的认真科学家将会感到尴尬。做你的作业。读者必须觉得您得到了想要的结果，因此您停止了。我们试图教导学生等待并仅发布统计学上有意义的内容，并且有一些数学规则可以定义有意义的规则。
好的，您没有发布我的回复，因为这很关键？严重地？
I would like to know, how many of the students in the study were male, and how many were female? If there was not an equal number of female and male in the study then this study is flawed.
Would be interesting to know the gender make up of the student group.
很有意思。这项研究的作者表示敬意。
A press release with a sample size of four? Is this what we now consider sociological research? I notice there are two female authors and one male author. From this I infer that NCSU is sexist against men. Sample size of 3.
Do you have some substantive to say, Jill?
It’s been said above by Jane. This is a terrible example of “scholarly” work.
这是如何出版的？其中的方法论错误令人恐惧！样本量的8-12名学生和2名教授的样本非常小，对于初学者来说（尤其是考虑到还有多少其他参数 - 一天中的时间中的时间，其他类互动等的协变量等。阶段！）。那么，为什么教授不对他们向学生提出的性别视而不见？我们怎么知道他们没有（甚至在潜意识中）偏向于他们的互动中的结果？像这样的科学糟糕的科学使我们其他人都在社会学中失望，与同事相比，我们看起来像贫穷的科学家。躲在“试点研究”后面也不重要 - 如果您要大声刺激这一点，至少要尝试有一些合法性！某人的顾问需要开始提供一些建议…
so true, Jane. ridiculous that the professors were fully aware of their ‘perceived gender’ in each scenario.
Oh please.