Student evaluations of teaching (SET): implications for medical education in psychiatry and an approach to evaluating SET and student performance

Objective: We present reflections on student evaluation of teaching (SET) in the context of recent higher educational research that assesses SET, as well as concurrent and/or subsequent student performance. Conclusions: In a sense, there is in-built cynicism in SET, with more favourable SET for easier assessment. There is emerging evidence that SET is inversely proportional to the performance of students in subsequent courses, i.e. the higher the ratings, the poorer the students perform in subsequent studies. It is proposed that SET should be combined with contemporaneous formative and summative assessments of student performance in medical school settings, especially in psychiatry education.