In universities around the world, semesters end with students filling out similar surveys about their experience in the class and the quality of the teacher.
Student ratings are high-stakes. They come up when faculty are being considered for tenure or promotions. In fact, they're often the only method a university uses to monitor the quality of teaching.
6 comments:
I think that this article provides a lot of insight into the world of teach evaluations. I have little experience with higher education teacher evaluations but I have heard some things about them. I think that the author makes an extremely valid point when they address the issue of using the same form for evaluation for various types of classes (lecture, studio, etc.). This is so important because of the different types of people in all of the classes and how these students work in those classes. I wish the article would elaborate and expand more on the newer types of evaluation for teachers. I think there are many interesting possibilities out there that must be explored.
The article is a good analytical insight into how useless student evaluations (FCEs) are some of the time, especially coming on the tail of Hawk v. Handsaw ending. We were asked to fill out an FCE for the HvH professors, and especially with the way that particular class is structured filling out the FCE honestly would result in a terrible evaluation for an otherwise great course. The articles comment that "perhaps smarter students understand the value of being pushed" hit the nail right on the head. Sometimes courses are terrible and and professors are rude, but you get unparallelled benefit from the class, how do we evaluate that here?
I 100% agree with this article. But I wish they also touched upon the kinds of classes that are being taught. I know now for a lot of core classes they will have a regular and then an advanced class. Also, I'm in an art major so the professors that encourage me to do better and push my talents are the professors I enjoy more, so I would give them a better evaluation. So I think this would change the evaluations a little bit more. And though i agree with this article, I hate how students are becoming lazy with their studies, especially in college. They try to find short cuts for studies they should focus a lot of their time on. And you're paying for your education, so why not make the most of it. Evaluating professors and teachers through the students eyes seems like a good idea. But it has been tested that it's not the most effective. Maybe changing the way it's thought out might work for the future, but for now this idea of evaluation is weak.
When end of semester rolls around doing course evaluations are one of the last things on my mind to do. Mostly because I do not feel I can evaluate the kinds of classes we take very well through CMU's questions. Like Chris said we take classes like Hawk vs. Handsaw where the whole point is we don't get a syllabus or the "norms" of other more mainstream classes. Answering the evaluations honestly does a disservice to the class because it is getting compared to something so different. The evaluations can also be incredibly biased a great class could get poor reviews because of the teacher or the workload. Like the article says either you hate the class and evaluate it or love it and evaluate. The in betweens don't usually like to take the time to evaluate a course. There is also the consideration that a great teacher is teaching a bad class and that reflects on them poorly. Freshmen year my interp and argument teacher was really great and very helpful but was teaching a terribly boring gen-ed with boring readings and annoying essays. How do we evaluate exceptions in this strict way.
I do think that student evaluations have a place in higher education. One of these is just practical- they are a relatively direct way of getting a baseline measurement on a teacher from the people that have the most direct experience with how the class is actually run. Reviewing syllabuses and handouts is only going to show so much. In addition, evaluations are one of the only times when students can bring up legitimate concerns with the way a class is run in an anonymous setting. However, there are clearly some issues with them. My mom was a teacher at a university for a while, and she found that the only kids who actually did the course evaluations were the ones who were angry with her because she gave them a (well deserved) bad grade. Because of this, even though her class was very good (it was always in high demand and had long waitlists) it got course evaluations that were not reflective of what the course was actually like. Part of this might be because course evaluations are so difficult on the student end- often the questions are vague and difficult to answer objectively, in addition to the fact that we always fill them out during final projects, when we have no time to think about anything (and the high stress environment means no one has the most positive attitude towards their teachers at that point in the year, no matter how good the course was previously). I think course evaluations shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely, but they should be taken as part of a more holistic analysis of the teacher.
I don’t think that faulty course evaluations should go away, but I do agree that the system is flawed. It is true, I only remember to do evaluations when I a pissed about a class that semester. I really think the solution there is to just make it mandatory so that even the neutral students speak up. There are teachers out there that treat students like complete crap and those teachers should not get tenure. I think that students’ opinions should be determining whether or not teachers are granted tenure and then colleagues and higher ups narrow down the pool. Schools are about the students so our opinions are some of the most important and I strongly believe this to be true. As for averaging the results, teachers who are only good with one section of the students they are given are not the most effective now are they? Then again I could be misinterpreting what the author was saying there.
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