Suppose the Economics Department has asked for your help in evaluating the instr

Question

Suppose the Economics Department has asked for your help in evaluating the instructors in the department. What two performance measures would you recommend the department use? For each one, discuss the uncontrollable risk, potential for distortion and possible manipulation. Would you call each measure narrow or broad?

(Example: PM = student attendance rate. Risk = professors can't actually control whether students come to class or not. Distortion = I can't think of obvious distortions - perhaps making class really fun to the detriment of actual learning. Manipulation = the professor could bribe the students to come to class, by offering A's for anyone with a perfect attendance rate for example)

Explanation / Answer

1. PM - Was the instructor grading fair? (Narrow - as it will indicate only grading part of the instructor)

Risk - Instructor do responsible for fair grading. Risk can be instructor have certain criteria to grade the students and mark or % may not only criteria. Some time instructor consider class participation, attendance etc as gradation criteria. so some student might feel grading is bias and feedback can be wrong.

Distortion - The criteria of evaluation can be distorted by few of the evaluators due to personal relation with instructor.  

Possible manipulation - the criteria is only for the final grading. there is every possibility that few of respondents can manipulate it to give feedback based on; instructor's feedback on them during class.

2. PM - Instructor demonstrate indepth knowledge on the subject (broad)

Uncontrollable risk - Here risk is understanding definition of subject itself. Let instructor is assigned for macro-economics he might not have indepth knowledge of micro economics so it might lead for wrong feedback from respondents.

Potential for distortion - The PM might get distorted with teaching effectiveness. Indepth knowledge for instructor and teaching effectiveness are different, it might possible instructor have sound indepth knowledge but teaching effectiveness is poor due to several other reason.

Possible manipulation - Instructor can manipulate by providing overall better grading to student.

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