for the Chronicle
The Gainesville Sun broke a story on July 19 that has potentially significant implications for postsecondary instructors across the country. The story concerned a lawsuit brought by Darnell Rhea, an adjunct instructor at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Fla., who claimed that his contract was not renewed because a student filed a complaint against him. The e-mail “complains of Rhea’s classroom behavior, his humiliating remarks to students, and his unorthodox teaching methodologies.” Rhea simply argued in his lawsuit that he wanted an opportunity to defend himself, but couldn’t because he didn’t know the identity of his accuser, yet the circuit court dismissed his case.
The First District Court of Appeal, however, reversed the dismissal, ruling “that when a student submits a complaint against a postsecondary instructor, the student’s name is public record.” Santa Fe College’s response to all this is ambiguous to say the least. The college maintained that it did not dismiss Rhea on the basis of the complaint, but Patti Locascio, general counsel for Santa Fe, said, “the school’s main concern is for the students.”
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I have long felt that making evals anonymous made it possible for malcontents to slander at will. Since we don't see our results until after we have turned in grades, we should be able to see who says what (though it would present a problem for students who say bad shit and then have to take that professor again because they've failed a required course taught only by that prof. Or the professor teaches multiple courses in their major...hmmm...maybe it wouldn't work after all...then again, maybe it would teach them to be more circumspect--the way we have to be?)
ReplyDeleteI have also thought that students should also have to answer a question that illustrates how many classes they'd missed during the semester: more than 4 should give their answers lower weight than students who've only missed 1 or 2. But of course there's no way to do that...or so I've been told.
maybe it would teach them to be more circumspect--the way we have to be?
DeleteYeah, this. At no other station in life are you invited to trash your superiors with absolutely zero fear of blowback. I say the sooner students learn the lesson, the better.
My undergraduate university had "percentage of classes attended" as a question on the student evaluations. I have no idea if they used the answers for anything worthwhile though.
DeleteOf course they shouldn't be anonymous. Our marking isn't: that is, students know who their professors are and who has assessed their work. Then, when we apply for promotion or tenure, or even simply have to deal with someone about our teaching, we can match the worst malcontents to their grades....
ReplyDeleteI hope some wealthy law or business proffie takes this to the Supreme Court, and they rule anonymous student evaluations illegal, since they violate a basic principle of American law: that the accused has the right to confront one's accuser, in any accusation of wrongdoing. It would be the least the Supremes could do for us, after giving us FERPA...
ReplyDeleteThere's substantial research showing that evals are affected by gender, race, attractiveness, time of day, and, of course, expected grade. A challenge to evals as arbitrary and unreliable could work. Should work, but there's a lot of money involved.
DeleteI honestly don't think it's overstatement to say that every problem with student evaluations--and maybe a good chunk of the problems in higher ed in general--would go away tomorrow if we required students to sign their names to them.
ReplyDeleteLet's call evaluations what they are--institution-sanctioned bullying.
"though it would present a problem for students who say bad shit and then have to take that professor again because they've failed a required course taught only by that prof. Or the professor teaches multiple courses in their major...hmmm...maybe it wouldn't work after all...then again, maybe it would teach them to be more circumspect--the way we have to be?"
ReplyDeleteJust because they have to sign their names to the evaluations wouldn't mean the professors get to see that information. Evaluation forms could be processed, the name stripped and the results/comments returned to the prof for feedback. Associating the name to the eval could be reserved for exceptional circumstances where a complaint is serious enough to be worth challenging *and* where the identity of the student is genuinely important to the defense.
I think merely the threat that they *could* ultimately get called on to defend their bs would cut out most of the useless spiteful crap.
I've often thought this as well. Further, attaching the student's final grade to the evaluation would, maybe, provide some context for HPT PTB.
DeleteFurther further, it would be nice (unicorn nice) if some channel was provided for instructors to rebut evaluation comments. For example, a student of mine complained about stale course material when, in reality (my reality), the course material was so fresh as to have been ripped from the day's headlines.
The student is in no position to evaluate anything.
ReplyDeleteI like this old Rate My Students post about student evaluations:
ReplyDelete==============
"If One Of Us Stands Up. We Can All Stand Up." Furlong from Fursville is Finished.
My mediocre Ohio college assigns all tenure-track folks a certain number of classes each term which must be evaluated through a standard 20 question Scantron form. The same idiotic questions that most of you are aware of are on there - "Professor ended class on time." "Professor treated me with respect." Yeah, sure, because that's a two way street.
Anyway, I've always hated evaluations and have never learned one tiny idea from doing them. Yet, I am trying to appease my master and so off I go into my class yesterday with the big brown envelope of shame.
And the tittering started, "Dr. Furlong, we get to grade YOU today!" "I'm going to TEAR you up," said one particularly meaty meathead.
And I just tried to ignore it, because this is how it usually goes.
"Now you'll see what it's like to get a big F!" "I'm so glad I came to class today; I was going to ditch, but this will be more fun."
And then as I read the canned instructions and put the course identifying info on the board, one student said, "5 bucks to anyone who writes that Dr. Furlong sometimes farts in his lectures." And then the big laughs really started.
I turned to them with what I can only imagine was a look of shock. And then I did it.
I went out among them and took the Scantrons and question sheets off the desks. Each looked at me with surprise as I did it, and one of my meatheads actually held his paper behind his back until he could see I wasn't smiling. I got all the sheets, dramatically tore them up and stuffed them in the envelope which I put in my briefcase.
"Yeah," I said. "I'll see you next week."
And for once I was the first one out of the door. I don't know what if anything will happen about this, but if one of us can stand up against this bullshit, then we can all stand up.
I've always thought this post was the gold standard on the issue.
ReplyDeleteThat's good. You pair that with actual research on the topic, and the whole exercise looks like a classic case of perverse incentives and the fallacy of seeing patterns in random data.
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