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| Who called me a fuddy duddy? |
By Margaret Mattes
Students and faculty sparred over a University Senate proposal that would recommend the publication of student course evaluations at a town hall meeting on Wednesday.
Students from within the senate and outside spoke in favor of the proposal, but several students and most faculty members opposed it, believing that the publication of course evaluations could threaten the school’s academic environment.
Under a system of open evaluations, students would have access to some qualitative and quantitative feedback from their peers. The senators’ hope is that the information will be integrated into the course directory. Currently, the evaluations are read only by relevant faculty members, including the professor and the department chair.
“Open course evaluations could create an atmosphere of pandering, surveillance, that could undermine responsible teaching,” School of the Arts professor Bette Gordon said. “Professors’ reputations and careers are on the line.”
Oh my god, terrifying. If I nitpick on the 1 terrible evaluation among 19 wonderful ones, I can't imagine what Dumbass Charlie would do...
ReplyDeleteUnless it begins to deter the shittier students from taking my class??
But no. This can be nothing but bad.
Open evaluations are okay with me if students' names are on them.
ReplyDeleteI believe that every problematic thing about institutional evaluations would go away tomorrow if we started requiring students to sign their names.
DeleteOf course, it would probably just drive more of them to anonymous internet sites, but whatever.
Student names, attendance, and earned course grade.
DeleteCompletely agree with Reg W.
ReplyDeleteI'd be perfectly happy to have my evaluations in the open, and even to respond to criticism that appeared in those evaluations. While I don't consider myself perfect, I believe that I'm a good teacher, I care about my students, and I do my best to be professional in all aspects of my work.
If they want open evals, I say bring it on.
But I also want the little bastards to be willing to sign their own names to some of the bullshit that they write. If Steve Snowflake complains about how I lecture too much, I should be able to respond that I wouldn't have lectured so much if Steve and his classmates actually did the reading and came to class ready for a discussion. If Suzy Snowflake whines that I grade too hard on essays, I should be able to point out that I asked Suzy to come to my office hours so I could help her with her writing, but she never showed up. If some students say that they shouldn't have to participate in class because they pay for their education, I should be able to hold up a list of those students so that the whole university can laugh at them.
At my university there is the option for professors to release their evaluations (just the numerical summaries) for students to view, and this is something the university clearly favors. Average grades are also available for every course. After all, as consumers students should have the right to know which professors might make them work hard.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree with Reg W. Either everything is open or everything is anonymous.
ReplyDeleteWithout giving away too much, there is a "booklet" published by a student group every year here that gathers unofficial student evaluations of most instructors on campus.
ReplyDeleteFaculty hate it, students love it, administrators threaten to do something about it but don't.
A possible problem, though, is that student evals right now are *almost* useful as the students sort of know what kind of persons are viewing them (you, the admins, and other fac) and what kind of feedback they're looking for and to what purpose; as soon as they're 'open', the perceived audience and tone changes, and then the eval system will . . . it will be, basically, That Other Site, basically ranting as entertainingly and harshly as possibly for the use/ amusement of other students, and the kind of evals that one finds over there will be officially sanctioned and hold public weight.
ReplyDeleteI have always been annoyed that students can rate me anonymously and I have no recourse.
ReplyDeleteI agree, all or nothing.
We have open evals at my school, though just for the numerical sections and of course, they're anonymous. It's pretty terrible, but not because of what the students might think. If your numbers are low, your colleagues assume you're an awful teacher. However, if yours are high it's even worse, as everyone then assumes this must be because you're handing out good grades like candy (unfortunately, our grade distributions are not coordinated with the evals). And the availability of the evals reinforces the idea that they actually mean something, yet the numbers really don't communicate anything of value to the instructor about what to improve or change, so it's all just a big show.
ReplyDeleteWhat's wrong with their simply using that site that shall not be mentioned??? That would be just as credible as what they propose (i.e. not credible at all).
ReplyDeleteI'm totally on board with open evals. And I understand that it's problematic to ask current students to publish their names. They may take another class from us, or from another prof.
ReplyDeleteSo, if the student wants their evaluation to be public, they need to agree to have not their name but their GRADE published.
The scathing review of professor X is accompanied by a little box that indicates the reviewer's final grade in the course. Or the good review as well.
That would separate the men from the boys.
I'm also in favor of openly publishing the grades that professors give out. Not by name of student, but by course. So, that highly-reviewed Professor who gives out candy grades is exposed not only to the students but to peers as well.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
At my institution, we're told that evaluations don't correlate with higher grades--but that higher grades correlate with better teaching, which correlates with higher evaluations. So I'm not sure that grade-shaming would work in my case, as a row of A's is "evidence that I'm an amazing teacher!" Alternatively, poor or mixed grades are evidence that you're not communicating the information effectively, or inspiring your students to learn.
DeleteI'm all for requiring students to put their names on evaluations. So what if they want to take a class with us in the future? Let that be their first lesson in life: Do not say bad things that may come back to bite you in the ass. Let them learn now that words have consequences; after all, no one outside the university takes anonymously-written criticism seriously. It's a lesson I wish I had learned earlier, quite frankly.
At my institution, we're told that evaluations don't correlate with higher grades--but that higher grades correlate with better teaching, which correlates with higher evaluations.
DeleteWow. That's some fancy footwork there.
I have to admit, I don't mind anonymous feedback, if it's actual feedback -- numbers don't mean shit -- and it's aimed at helping me rather than judging me. You still have the grain of salt problem of course.
But for evaluative feedback, yeah, let 'em sign their names. And let's not have any more of that anonymous voting in tenure committees, either. A person should know who voted against 'em, even (especially?) if the final result is positive.
Gone Grad summarized some of the more inane "research" on the correlation between high grades and high evals very nicely. Of course such arguments would never, never lead to grade inflation, or anything like that. . . .
DeleteAnd I like Stella's idea of correlating grades and comments. In addition to that sort of one-to-one correlation of written comments and grades, universities should regularly run the numbers to see whether/how grades and eval numbers are correlating. They should also be running -- and publishing -- regular checks for correlation with faculty age, gender, and/or ethnicity -- data they already have for other purposes -- just to make sure that they aren't making retention, salary, and/or promotion decisions at least partly on the basis of an instrument that violates their non-discrimination policies.
Sunlight, indeed.
I think the end times are near. If my university even considers such a stupid idea, I will retire back to the private sector. Considering the shortage of faculty in my field, this is not an idle threat.
ReplyDeleteStill, you gotta love the naivete of these dear "limited and precious time" student senators. I am sure that they created this proposal to improve the classroom experience, and improve teaching! They would NEVER think that they would be used by students to pick and choose instructors who were "easy graders" or "entertaining" or "flexible."
Of course not!
Considering that the last batch of evals I got included the following, I say, "Bring on the open evals: people will see why I deem them so useless, and why students are not equipped to judge a course":
ReplyDelete"I wish we wouldn't of had to buy a book."
"I liked the readings but I din't [sic] have enough time to do them because we only have 10 weeks in a quarter."
"I don't know why I had to take this class. It was the most yousless [sic] class. All we did was rite [sic]."
"I hate the chalkboard. Why do you use the chalkboard?"
Some of my highlights from last term:
Delete"Quizes [sic] shouldn't be given at the beginning of class. This isn't fair if your [sic] late. We shouldn't miss more points just for being late."
"We shouldn't have to read material that we won't be tested on. We should only have to read the material that will be on the test."
"I don't understand why we had to read so many boring 18th century hamsters. My friend took a hamsterology class, and he got to read The Hamster Games. Why don't you teach The Hamster Games?" [Class ID was Hamsters of the 18th Century.]
"It's like you actually expected us to do the reading. Everyone know that in classes like this you don't actually have to do the reading."
Not mine, but a friend's: "Don't take this class unless you're crazy about Medieval Hamster Husbandry." Yes, this upper-year course was Medieval Hamster Husbandry.
DeleteWe are required to release our summary evaluations (meaning the average score per class, not per question, and not the comments). One of the proffie rating sites actually goes to court to get this info for public institutions if they won't volunteer it, and they've been successful from what I've heard.
ReplyDeleteI don't care about the numbers so much, but some of the individual questions on our student evaluations are so inane that they provide nothing of value. The comments can be valuable if students are serious learners and truly think about what they write. I have made changes in assignments as the result of useful student feedback, and generally those changes have made the work more effective. It's the crappy comments that suck the life out of me. I try to consider the source, but I've discovered that students who don't like me or don't like to work tend to be much meaner now than they were when I first started teaching.
I'm not sure this is entirely a new idea. At my undergrad university (a selective private R1), the numbers were publicly available (in a bound booklet, similar to the course catalog). There was also a student publication of the sort Will describes (basically, a RMP precursor, though more entertaining, since the writers were quite good, and often also wrote for the campus newspaper, the campus humor magazine, or both). As far as I could tell, the evals were seen as a sop to students wanting to have input; the administrators didn't pay any attention to them (except, perhaps, if they were looking for an excuse to get rid of someone for other reasons). The students much preferred the informal guide.
ReplyDeleteAt my present university, numbers (but not written comments) are available to anyone with a university email and password (so, students, faculty, and, I assume, administrators and at least some staff). The administrators seem to care about the darn things, but I've seen little to no evidence that students or faculty colleagues do (though they do play a part -- but only, thank goodness, a part -- in our salary reviews, so the people on that committee look at them).
Koofers.com began gathering (via FOIA request) and publishing grade distributions a few years ago. I don't know about others, but I find those far more interesting (they reveal, as I already knew, that I award a ridiculous number of Bs, some of which should probably be Cs. I do, however, award fewer As than many of my colleagues).
I'm not sure how I'd feel about publication of the written comments. The online system toward which we're moving aggregates them into "went well"/"needs improvement" categories, which takes some of the sting out of individual comments, and reveals patterns (including the inevitable one where one student hated exactly what another loved).
I enjoyed something later in the article:
ReplyDeletethere's a discussion of making these evals public, but only if the students' names are attached to them. Suddenly all the little bastards are scrambling like cockroaches to get back under the refrigerator.
Yeah, that's what I call responsibility and accountability...
Here at Baby 'em State U, we only have a scantron student eval. I sometimes wish we collected written feedback, so that we can arm ourselves with the kind of flaky nonsense Cynic and Gone Grad highlight.