Before you disappear, could you post this vidshizzle for me? It's one I made based on my all time favorite RYS post about student evaluations. I, too, did my student evals this week, and everything in this post applies to me.
And it is eval season after all... What a barbaric practice.
Wanda from Wilmington
Sorry kids, but this robot-video thing has finally gone too far. Although I enjoyed most of the others, the inflection-free, robotic voice spoils this one: it was much better when it was an impassioned written statement. Edward Tufte would have a field day with it.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I agree with just about every word of the original written statement, by the way. Thankfully, in my department we rely primarily on peer evaluations: it's extra work, but I wonder about the competence of any scientist, and the common sense of anyone else, who can't see right through the limitations of anonymous student evaluations of teaching.
ReplyDeleteUntil we break the back of student evaluations, we're always going to be judged unfairly.
ReplyDeleteI wish I had the good sense to follow another old RYS post from April of 2006:
To be Read by the Instructor:
Each quarter, Xxxxxxxxx Colege asks students in every course to complete a Course Evaluation form. Your honest, thoughtful responses provide us with vital information we use to evaluate and improve courses. We also use the information to gather data on your instructor. If he likes to wear dresses on the weekend, for example, the data we get from you will allow us to fire him for something other than being freaky-deaky.
Your responses provide important information we use to evaluate part-time instructors for re-hiring and scheduling of future classes. Although, to be fair, part-timers are so cheap and pliable, that unless you report that your instructors have been sodomizing animals in lieu of lecturing, we'll probably hire them all back and put them in your classes again next semester. It gives a nice break to our real professors who are trying to get ready for tenure and promotion.
At the same time, part and full-time instructors use your responses – and particularly your written comments – to help improve our courses and our teaching. At least in theory. Some just toss them in the bin right away, cackling at how silly your little concerns are.
It’s important for you to know, however, that we instructors will not see your responses, or the summary of them, until after your assessments have been submitted. In other words, the anonymity of your responses will be protected. We ask that you be fair, candid, and constructive in your comments. Besides, we've saved some innocuous class quizzes from early in the semester so that we can match your handwriting, and if you make even the slightest negative comment, we'll find who your next profs are and collude to give you so much hell you won't believe it.
At this point, I’m going to turn the process over to [student volunteer/person too stupid to avoid the job], and I’ll leave the room while you complete your forms. Thanks for your cooperation. I'll be out in the hallway, relishing an extra 15 minutes away from you and your criminally small brains and bad attitudes.
I was stunned this morning to see the Univ of Quebec video that was on CM a few days ago featured on the Today Show this morning. The Today Show staff did their own version of the same song. Click to see Matt Lauer and the gang.
ReplyDeletea) This doesn't work as a video. Conversations, imagined or real, work as videos. I'd much rather read this, especially when compared to the monotone robot thing.
ReplyDeleteb) I agree with the sentiment, though. Student evaluations are stupid, mostly because they're just not helpful. Case in point: last semester, a few of my students wrote (in as many words) that they felt the point of class was for me to give answers to the tests, and anything else was a waste of time. Not helpful, and not gonna happen. Furthermore, some felt like they didn't have enough direction and examples for the final project, failing to note the sheaf of directions/examples I'd put on our website, and the number of times I'd referred them to that. (You will not believe how many times students asked me for these things, and how tired I got of telling them that once again, they were already available.) The ones who didn't ask me or didn't look assumed that they didn't exist, and then blamed me for not being helpful. Again, dumb evaluations.
c) And of course, there's the fear factor. I agree with the OP in that I'm far too easy on my students because I worry that they'll write that I'm "unfair" for not allowing endless retakes, accepting late assignments, etc, etc. Of course, my boss(es) simply see "unfair" and assume that I'm doing something wrong. Again, dumb evaluations.
PS - I'm not sure if it's the widgets or what, but something on the entire site keeps fucking up my browser. It's impossible to scroll without the page jumping around like an unmedicated fifth grader. What gives?
ReplyDeleteI don't see the jumping around. You might test it with a different browser to see if it's happening all the time or just with what you're currently using. I know that IE seems very slow compared with Chrome or Mozilla.
ReplyDeleteThe jumping around seems to be associated with embedded video. The browser is slower to react when you scroll down past a big embedded video, even if it's not playing.
ReplyDeleteIf you embed enough video, even a fast processor can give this result.
I don't see any jumping on any of these, but then I don't really know what I'm looking for either.
ReplyDeleteOh, and thanks to Wanda for the link to old 2006 post. I'd never seen it. I get to skip evals this semester... No cookies for them this semester, I guess... LOL.
ReplyDeleteEvaluations are especially painful before one receives tenure. One becomes afraid to mark fairly (i.e. fail students who deserve to fail), comment when students lie, or demand that students meet basic standards of behaviour like showing up to class on time and paying attention during class. All of these things could lead to poor evaluations and that, in turn, could lead to problems getting job security. It's a terrible situation. Even if one's evaluations are positive, the fear remains. How we can teach well when we're afraid of our own students, I do not know.
ReplyDeleteI fear my student evaluations. Those digits are used against me, and no matter how I try to just do the job I know I'm good at, I tiptoe around my customers so as not to receive some bad scores.
ReplyDeleteI would perform class in front of a jury of my peers any day of the semester, but I cannot understand what student evaluations are supposed to be worth.
I post on the Moodle website a handful of questions to which I would really find answers helpful, usually pertaining to innovations I've made in teaching the class that year. "Was the textbook helpful in explaining X?" "Did you find the use of iClickers a) helpful b) annoying c) a waste of time?" That sort of question. I also leave space for comments.
ReplyDeleteBut these questions are NOT anonymous, and I warn them in advance that I will know who sent the answers. I also tell them that I do this because I have noticed that I get much more useful, thoughtful, courteous and reasoned comments when people have to sign them.
these responses - I don't usually get many, but I get some every year - I read and consider as I prepare the class for the following year. But I don't read the comments on the anonymous scantron forms. I don't even read the numbers. I just stuff them in my file. I have never got any useful information out of them.
It's my chair's job (he does read them) to tell me if there's a problem. It is not my job to let myself be made miserable by some punk's anonymous insults.
I explained to my students that, since this is tenure year for me, their evaluations will not have any impact in my tenure case. Nor in my case for full, since my school only asks for the data of the last five years. So we are just feeding the recycled paper industry.
ReplyDeleteReg W.:
ReplyDeleteI would perform class in front of a jury of my peers any day of the semester, but I cannot understand what student evaluations are supposed to be worth.
Here's the cynical answer, which is probably true (at least I've never heard a better explanation):
Student evaluations exist so that administrators can justify what would be otherwise an arbitrary firing by appealing to poor student evals. Since even someone with the looks of Natalie Portman and the patience of a Mother Theresa is going to get bad evals from someone, these bad evals can be kept in reserve and sprung on anyone who irritates those further up the university hierarchy.
I, too, agree with pretty much all of the original post, but didn't think it gained anything by being video-ized (except a certain jerkiness on my sometimes-slow connection).
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I found myself disagreeing with a bit: at my school, falling anywhere below 4.0 on a 5-point scale seems to arouse concern. Scores in the 2s, though theoretically in the middle of the scale, would be seen as disastrous.
I love evaluations. I draw a little pattern in the 5-point scale bubbles. Then for the comments I write "did u figure out the pattern? lulz"
ReplyDeleteI'd like to think it brings a smile to my professors' faces.