I have finite attention. Attention (time and effort) is probably more important to my learning than the quality of my teacher. Without attention you fail. With infinite attention you get a perfect grade.
When you take a hard course it consumes a disproportionate amount of attention. Even if the teacher is bad at his/her job a harsh grading scheme will drive you to spend hours in the library. You will learn a lot because you are burning valuable attention; attention other classes can not have. So such a class necessarily good? Of course not. Not if the learning benefit is outweighed by learning opportunity cost.
So regarding the finding of the study
The better the professors were, as measured by their
students' grades in later classes, the lower their
ratings from students.
I'm not confident that performance in later classes of the same sequence is a fair measure of learning; what matters to me is performance in ALL later classes. How do evaluations correlate then?
When you take a hard course it consumes a disproportionate amount of attention. Even if the teacher is bad at his/her job a harsh grading scheme will drive you to spend hours in the library. You will learn a lot because you are burning valuable attention; attention other classes can not have. So such a class necessarily good? Of course not. Not if the learning benefit is outweighed by learning opportunity cost.
So regarding the finding of the study
I'm not confident that performance in later classes of the same sequence is a fair measure of learning; what matters to me is performance in ALL later classes. How do evaluations correlate then?