I teach at a teaching university. Research is not a priority. I'm new to the university and am teaching full-time. I believe I've developed a rapport with the current cohort of senior students.
During one our classes, the discussion moved to the teaching of other faculty. This is a group of seniors who are likely to graduate at the end of the semester.
The students made several very concerning things about other faculty:
- They download labs from other universities and these labs cannot be run on the equipment we have. When asked about it, they state ... I'm retiring soon, let's just do it..
- They publicly abuse individual students for stupidity.
- They make assessment available through the content management system without mentioning its existence to the students during class.
Apart from end-of-semester student feedback, there doesn't seem to be any way to address such poor teaching (or even investigate whether the student views are correct).
What do other places do? Is it at a department level? Dean level? Is it a separate organization?
I can't do anything directly for the current cohort of students, but it would be good to try to move towards clear mechanisms for improving faculty teaching.