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Caption: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1944
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1064 BOARD OF TRUSTEES consideration of curricula. Let us now turn to the second, under the discussion of teaching. What constitutes good teaching? Who are the good teachers? Is it possible to determine with any considerable degree of objectivity whether undergraduate instruction is efficient? These and other kindred questions have been moot points for many years in the realm of undergraduate higher education. Wide differences of opinion still exist concerning them. Nevertheless, in recent years objective methods have been developed to determine whether instruction at this level is effective or not. These devices though not infallible are far more reliable than personal opinion. In spite of the fact, however, that such measures exist and that they have been applied with highly useful results, the idea is still prevalent in many quarters, especially among the members of faculties who themselves do the teaching, that the really important results of teaching cannot be measured. Evidence in support of the point of view that quality of teaching can be objectively measured is to be found in the growing body of reports of experimentation in fields of instruction. These reports show that the results of learning differ when different teaching procedures are used. Since what the student learns is the real end measure of the effectiveness of what he is taught, it is only reasonable that faculties both as individual members and as groups should inform themselves as to the best ways of measuring the results of their instruction, and for their own benefit as well as for the benefit of students make the best possible use of such information. Throughout practically all the Commission's interviews with teaching, as well as with administrative, members of faculties the question was repeatedly asked: What is being done toward the evaluation of instruction? The replies given were almost wholly in the negative. A few exceptions occurred in a limited number of departments where it was reported that the teaching of graduate assistants had received special attention through periodic departmental staff conferences, to which assistants had been invited and where educational policies had been discussed. Furthermore, members of [46 —A.C.E. Report]
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