Using the Fuzzy Synthetic Decision Approach to Assess the Performance of University Teachers in Taiwan

In this paper, we evaluate university teachers' performance by using the fuzzy synthetic decision approach. It is hoped that this fuzzy teacher performance appraisal system can be put into practice to (1) improve teaching quality and guarantee teaching effect, (2) affirm the research fruit of the professors and bring along academic research atmosphere, and (3) encourage the professors to recognize the student tutorship and take an active part in the administrative work of the department and schools and the outs read work. Introduction A set of highly reliable and effective performance appraisal rules and model, not only can enhance the reasonability and objectivity of the performance appraisal, but also can promote the personnel's morale, so as to obtain the maximum management effect. What the conventional performance appraisal is criticized is the appraisal of none quantitative index, because it is full of uncertainty and simulation, which not only cannot fully express the feeling of the directors, but also cannot fully reflect the shortcomings of the information. The performance appraisal often makes people feel the injustice of blackbox operation (Hong, 1992; Wu, 1994). Fuzzy theory was developed to provide decision-making capabilities in the presence of imprecise and uncertain information (Zadeh, 1965). During the course of performance appraisal, the personnel performance should be appraised by multiple indexes. In fact, the performance appraisal is a multi-factor interaction comprehensive estimation and the thinking process of the appraiser has possessed the fuzzy and non-quantitative character. In recent years, many excellent junior colleges have been promoted to Institute of Technology and the Institute of Technology have been renamed University of Science and Technology in Taiwan. To improve the standard of technological and vocational system institutes, the faculty acted an important role in them (Feng, 1995; Yang, 1997). Therefore the teachers' performance appraisal has become a serious problem in university management and an important task to guarantee the educational quality. The purpose of this study attempts to use fuzzy synthetic decision approach to assess the performance of university teachers to make it more transparent, logical and reasonable. Literature Review The teacher's performance appraisal can be defined as the process to make valuate judgment and determination about the teacher performance. The steps are collecting all relative information according to the teacher's performance, to find out the success and failure and the reasons thereof about the teacher's performance. The objective is to help the teacher to improve teaching, provide the teacher with appropriate on-job advanced studies, adjust the research fields and the administrative basis of teacher appointment, rewards and punishment (Tenbrink, 1974; Worthen and Sanders, 1987; Feng, 1995). To bring the objectives of performance appraisal into full play, the selection of performance index is very important, because whether the index is chosen property or not concern whether the performance of the appraised can be estimated objectively and comprehensively. According to the first item in University Law in Taiwan, it is prescribed: iThe university should take researching the knowledge, cultivating the talents, improving the culture, serving the society, and promoting national development as its objectsi, with reference to the practice of universities at home and abroad, the teacher's appraisal usually is divided into three items including teaching, research and service (Jauch, 1975; Hong, 1992; Feng, 1995; Yang, 1997), they are described as follows: 1. Teaching: The appraisal of the teaching performance usually takes the teaching plan, teaching content, teaching skill, teaching approach, professional ability, professional spirit, teaching material preparation, student learning performance, student accepting degree, organization ability, teaching load, teaching innovation, student's appraisal to teacher, publishing textbook, developing experimental equipments and manual, etc as indexes (Tummala and Sanchez, 1982; Feng, 1990; Zhou, 1991; Feng, 1995; Yang, 1997). …