Evaluating Students’ Evaluations of Medical Professors: Are There Cookies?

Prof. Dr. med. Manuel Wenk, co-author of the cookies study. The cookies were chocolate.

Some medical schools may be selecting or rejecting faculty members because those individuals do or do not offer cookies to their students. That is a possible conclusion one might draw, after reading this new study done by faculty members:

“Availability of cookies during an academic course session affects evaluation of teaching,” Michael Hessler, Daniel M Pöpping, Hanna Hollstein, Hendrik Ohlenburg, Philip H Arnemann, Christina Massoth [pictured below], Laura M Seidel, Alexander Zarbock, and Manuel Wenk [pictured above], Medical Education, vol. 52, no. 10, October 2018, no. 1064-1072. The authors, at the University Hospital of Munster, Germany, report:

“Results from end-of-course student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are taken seriously by faculties and form part of a decision base for the recruitment of academic staff, the distribution of funds and changes to curricula. However, there is some doubt as to whether these evaluation instruments accurately measure the quality of course content, teaching and knowledge transfer.”

Dr. med. Christina Marie Massoth. co-author of the study.