Measuring Productivity
Initial perspectives on productivity as an element of evaluating teaching.
The proposals profiled here are still under review!!
No one would want to say that the sole purpose of a teacher is to "produce" large numbers of student-products. This could easily eclipse concerns for the quality of education. Yet, at the same time, we recognize, for example, the value of a colleague who can advise a large body of graduate students or undergraduate researchers. And we often laud the person who accepts responsibility for the large service courses(!). Teachers do talk about the different burdens of "courseload." Though we would never want to reduce the "business" of a university to mere productivity, financial resources do matter, and teaching as many students as possible well with the available resources is certainly wise (making resources available elsewhere). So, the challenge is: how do we assess or "measure" productivity in teaching? The purpose of this page is to provoke discussion towards making explicit the implicit norms about courseload, class size, course level, retention rates, balancing responsibilities, etc.
Here is one prospective measure for course productivity, which also includes an element of the level of student achievement:
P(teaching) = SUM OF: (grade for each student on 4.0 scale) x (course hours) [ for all students taught in a year ]
Note: This measure would be meaningless, of course, without supplemental information on "quality control" and a check on grade inflation. It assumes that the challenge of teaching and effort invested is (or should be) roughly equivalent for courses at different levels (introductory and advanced). It does recognize, however, that managing a large class uses far more effort that teaching a small seminar. As an additional index, it allows the teacher to demonstrate and earn recognition for the "volume" or scale of teaching.
The above measure does not include advising or mentoring (or independent study). Can these be included somehow?
Another quantitative dimension of teaching (esp.important in introductory courses at UTEP) is retention. Figures on overall pass rates (A,B,C) based on numbers of registered students (on Census Day?) may be appropriate.