Webinar - Gender Bias in Student Evaluations

 

In partnership with the National University Technology Network (NUTN) and Texas Tech University, Open SUNY is pleased to host and showcase Dr. Kristina Mitchell. Dr. Mitchell of the Texas Tech University Department of Political Science, is the lead author of the recent study Gender Bias in Student Evaluations. A growing literature shows that student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are biased against women, which presents a significant problem when SETs are used in hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions. Dr. Mitchell will first describe her study and situate it in the literature of studies with similar findings. She found that even in identical online courses, students rate a male professor higher on an ordinal scale than a female professor. 

 

Dr. Mitchell will discuss the implications of these findings for the higher education community and then provide strategies for addressing this issue. She will provide instructional design suggestions for how to incorporate materials into online and face-to-face courses that might address this bias. Alternate methods of teaching evaluation will be discussed, as well as strategies for women, for allies, and for institutions in addressing gender bias in higher education more broadly.