Instructor Evaluations?
Or to put it bluntly – is there any kind of quality control for instructors? Students come to a class expecting that the instructor knows the subject matter, has been through the labs and has a depth and breadth of knowledge about the product. This is what the students expect and deserve and should be the standard for instructors. This is not always the case, or at least from what I hear from students.
Metrics That Matter (MTM) is the online evaluation whereby the training facility, course content AND the instructor are scored. If an instructor does an excellent job, the evaluations will reflect this, likewise, if the instructor does a poor job – the evaluations should reflect this as well. There are several problems with this. One – the instructor may not do a good job but has a charismatic personality so the students score this person higher than they would otherwise be the case. Two – are there mechanisms in place to identify instructors who consistently do a poor job and do these mechanisms work? What is hard is getting students to complete evaluations. I think there should be a short grace period before filling out evaluations to remove the “charisma” piece from the evaluation process.
The mechanism to evaluate instructors and to evaluate them properly cannot be overemphasized. There are many instructors who shouldn’t be in the field and the evaluations should make this evident. Those instructors who excel at training will also be revealed through the evaluations as well.
The Certification Battle Rages Onwards
