Generally, students are able to report on the extent to which a teacher appears prepared for class sessions, communicates clearly, stimulates interest, and demonstrates enthusiasm and respect for students; research shows that student responses on these dimensions are valid and reliable. Generally, students are less able to judge the knowledge of the instructor or scholarly content and currency of a course.

When using student ratings for personnel decisions, keep the following guidelines in mind:

• Student ratings results should not be used as the only source of data on the quality of an instructor’s teaching.
• Questions about instructors and courses should be relevant. They should fit the instructors and courses being evaluated.
• Multiple sets of ratings of faculty courses over time should be considered; personnel decisions should be influenced only by ratings from several courses over several terms.
• Do not over emphasize small differences in ratings results. Especially for personnel decisions, three broad categories are sufficient: “excellent,” to help identify possible nominees for teaching honors; “satisfactory”; and "needs improvement."
• Contextual data (such as departmental or school means) allow individual evaluations to be interpreted within a meaningful context. In addition, information about course characteristics (e.g., disciplinary field, class size, required/elective, lower division/upper division, etc.) should be considered when reviewing evaluation results.
• For additional context, departments can provide opportunities for instructors to comment on their ratings, either in a teaching statement or in a separate document. In particular, such comments allow instructors to offer their own perspective on student ratings results, and they can also provide context on any special circumstances surrounding a given course (e.g., new courses or innovations in teaching, a shift from an elective to a required course, changes in departmental grading standards, student resistance to certain types of material).
• Student rating results should be considered in personnel decisions only when at least 10 students in a given class respond and only when the majority of the students in a class have completed the surveys.
• The use of optional items chosen by the instructor customizes  the forms and makes them more useful for teaching improvement purposes.
• While written comments are particularly helpful in improving classroom performance, they are not recommended for use in personnel decisions.

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