“A FRACTURED, SEMI-FACTUAL HISTORY OF STUDENT RATINGS OF TEACHING: Meso-Boomer Era (1960s)!”

A HISTORY OF STUDENT RATINGS: Meso-Boomer Era (1960s)
The 1960s were rocked by student protests on campuses, the Vietnam War, and the Broadway musical Hair (based on the TV program The Brady Bunch). This “boomer” generation was blamed for everything during this period, which was called the "Meso-Boomer Era." These boomers demanded that college administrators give them a voice in educational decisions that affected them. They expressed their collective voice by screaming like banshees, sitting in the entrances of administration buildings, and writing and administering rating scales to evaluate their instructors. They even published the ratings in student newspapers so students could use them as a consumer’s guide to course selection. There is still residual evidence of that practice today at several institutions, especially in countries like Texas.

There were few centrally-administered rating systems in universities to evaluate teaching effectiveness. Most uses of student ratings by faculty were voluntary. In general, the quality of the scales was dreadful and their use as evaluation tools was fragmented, unsystematic, and arbitrary, kinda like this blog series.

As for research, there was only a smidgen; it was all quiet on the publication front. The researchers were busy in the reference sections of their university libraries praying that someone would invent Google so that they could work at Starbucks instead. They were also preparing for the next decade: “Meso-Golden Era.” My next blog will document the research contributions during the 1970s.

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