My Thoughts about the "Best 300 Professors"

While I do appreciate the students who wrote positive comments about me, and I'm sure that many (or even all) of the Professors on the list are excellent teachers, I don't think too much should be made of being selected one of the "Best 300 Professors".

Though I haven't seen the study design, I suspect it has many problems. For example, I'd be surprised if the sample is either random or representative. In fact, I'm not sure that they can even guarantee that the students who evaluated me have ever taken a course with me. As another example, I doubt that different students at JMU use the same scoring/evaluation system, let alone students at different universities, making it very difficult to compare across universities.

Though I haven't seen the statistical analysis, I suspect it also has many problems. For example, I can imagine many factors that would bias whatever summary statistics they calculated. As another example, they may not have calculated the rank order from the "raw scores" (whatever they were) in an appropriate fashion.

One might argue that, given these concerns, I should not have agreed to participate. I did give it a considerable amount of thought and decided that JMU's reputation might be hurt if no JMU faculty appeared on the list. So, I agreed to participate despite my reservations. If universities nationwide had decided not to participate, I wouldn't have participated. (I suspect that some universities did, unilaterally, decide not to participate, though I don't know this for a fact.)

That said, I take teaching very seriously and think I do a pretty good job, both in and out of the classroom. I base my opinion on years of "official" course evaluations (which have problems of their own), conversations with current and past students, conversations with other faculty, and self-reflection. In my experience, the same is true of many of my colleagues at JMU and elsewhere (including those who are on this list). I try to provide my students with several different ways to learn the material in my courses, and I think this helps many of them learn. I also try to help them learn how to learn, so that they will be able to continue to do so after they leave JMU. I'm happy that many of them avail themselves of these opportunities and that many of them both seem to learn the course content and become better learners. I'm also happy that they seem to appreciate my efforts.