By the time classes started, enrollment had gone up again. And by the end of the add/drop period (after the students had known me for two weeks), it had gone back up exactly to the original number. That’s still 60% of full enrollment, but no one has dropped so far. So it’s a word-of-mouth issue (or “that site”), but if students decide to check for themselves, they see whatever they heard is unfounded.
My dept head believes it’s fair to penalize me for reputation, that is: to take low initial enrollments into account when evaluating me, not just the “success rates” based on the number of students who do show up for the course. What do you think? Also, any ideas on what I might do to change that quickly? (Short of bringing cookies, or giving them all A’s). It’s a problem even when I’m given an honors section: we have to actively recruit for those, and it’s an uphill struggle.
Q: Does anyone else here have a reputation problem?
How do you deal with it?
Why does your department chair get to set your performance criteria? Don't you have a contract? Sounds like an issue for your union.
ReplyDeleteYes, I have a reputation problem. My sections fill more slowly than those of my colleague, who shows lots of films, gives extra credit for bringing donuts, and has a posse of currently favorite students. Fewer students earn As in my sections, and my numbers are lower on The Site That Shall Not Be Named, though there's a bimodal pattern with the more literate commenters advising serious students to take me, work their tails off, and get a real college education in my discipline.
I also do more rigorous peer evaluations that occasionally result in an adjunct not being rehired.
All this is known to my chair and deans (except the Site TSNBN? At least they haven't said anything about it). When colleagues' and deans' kids take a class in my discipline, it's with me. I thank my lucky stars to be at this school.
Sorry for your bullshit situation, Peter K.
PG, thanks. We're not unionized. The evaluation criteria we have are spelled out in the department's Bylaws: "Criteria that may be taken into account in the evaluation of teaching include exams, feedback from students, class visits by peers, and grade distributions. " This is so vague, in practice it means the dept head can do anything he wants. I can (and do) write rebuttals to his comments, but they are ignored. Since faculty evaluation is confidential, none of us knows which criteria are being emphasized in the evaluation of our colleagues (or has access to raw data for teaching, such as student evals. or success rates for the others.) It's a black box.
DeleteThis is one of the moments when I realize that I could have it much worse in at least some ways, even in a tenure-track job. First of all, our annual reviews are done by a committee, not a single person (though realistically probably only one or two members of the committee actually look at any one person's materials). Second, an appeal goes to a person recently rotated off the same committee (and to the chair, though I think the chair can only fix errors of fact on hir own).
DeleteAnd most important, everyone (TT and full-time non-TT) is evaluated according to a rubric. The TT rubric includes research, teaching, and service, and I'm told their teaching section is not as elaborated as ours (but definitely includes review of teaching materials and, in the probationary years, class visit letters as well as student evals. I'm pretty sure nobody looks at enrollments; with a declining number of majors, underenrolled classes are a hazard everybody faces. I do hope that a couple of my colleagues who are teaching necessary classes as overloads are getting some sort of credit from their colleagues; I'm pretty sure they are.)
Because NTT faculty are teaching-only (or, in a few cases, teaching + administrative duties), our rubric focuses entirely on teaching. Student evaluations play a role, but several other categories are devoted to examination of course materials (for things ranging from being in line with course objectives to creativity and effectiveness in designing assignments and activities that meet those objectives to quality and frequency of feedback), and there's one for class visits as well (which are more frequent in earlier years, and become less so as the teacher has a longer record with the school). There's a number-rating system built into the rubric, which is designed to make sure that really consistent *very* low student evals will set off an alarm, and really good ones will raise the rating considerably (but won't raise someone to the highest rating without other clear signs of high quality -- assignments, for instance, have to be rigorous, and aligned with course goals, for that to happen). It's by no means a perfect system (among other things, there's inevitably an element of subjectivity involved in applying the rubric), and the letters that result still have a full paragraph devoted to student evals (because they're going on to the Dean and the Provost, and deans and provosts tend to like data that can be presented on a spreadsheet), but it's a reasonably fair system, and we have a pretty clear idea of how we'll be evaluated (and of some things we can do, other than stuffing the students with cookies or pizza on eval day, to raise our scores).
P.S. We don't have a union, either (or any hope of one -- right-to-work state). The university faculty handbook is about as specific as your department bylaws; the department handbook may well have been amended to make reference to the rubrics (we do have a well-functioning department, and this is an issue that successive chairs have addressed as the department has grown larger).
P.P.S. A lot of data (student eval numbers, faculty salaries, grade distributions) for our institution is available to all, either from inside the institution (eval numbers) or as the result of FOIAing by various entities (grade distributions on a rating site -- not TSTSNBN; salaries published both on-campus by the faculty association, and off-campus by the newspaper of record in the state capital). I suspect your institution is private; otherwise, you might look into the wonderful world of FOIA. You'd probably need a lawyer's help to get started, but, once your right to the information is established, the process can, I believe, become pretty routine.
I see you describe your institution as "land-grant" below; that means it's public, right (or it has the sort of dual status that Cornell and a few other places have). So, maybe FOIA, and/or enlisting the help of a state legislator (and/or a muckraking reporter) interested in the quality of faculty evaluation could help?
DeleteYes CC, it is a public university. Faculty salaries are available from the local newspaper (once a year, with a ten-month delay). Student evaluation reports can be seen by anyone with a university account, with a delay of one year or more. The dept head receives reports with grade distributions, but they are not shared.
DeleteThe information my research performance evaluation is based on is public-domain (publications, preprints, speaking invitations), and I don't see why it should be different for teaching. If I were the dept head, I'd post the reports he gets (with student evals and anonymized grades) on a password-protected departmental web page. But I don't see that happening here, the entire state has a "smoke-filled-rooms" good ole' boy mentality.
As for rubrics, I'd settle for using all the elements listed--course materials, class visits, grading and student evals (relative to peers, for the same course) --and weighing them equally. As things stand now, I get weak ratings from the head based entirely on enrollments and the average student response to one question in a twenty-question form. Our evals are done online, with a U-wide response rate of around 30% (about the same for my classes). Students who never attended but didn't drop the course are allowed to fill them out.
Unless you are worried about losing your teaching assignment, I think listing you as TBA is a good thing.
ReplyDeleteI once suggested to the Head (in response to complaints about low enrollments in lower-div courses) that lower-div courses be listed without the instructor's name, to keep students from "section-shopping" based on instructor reputation. His answer was that "other faculty would complain" (how does he know?) and then that "students should have the right to pick an instructor they like". Of course, if only my section is listed as TBA, someone will tell the students who it is, and it will become a kind of joke.
DeleteThat's a shame. We list all freshman classes as TBA for that exact reason. It has eliminated the students filling up a section of their favorite instructors. Of course, our department head and faculty were in favor of this so it worked smoothly.
DeleteThe problem is when a student is trying to avoid a particular professor for a good reason and ends up in his or her class. Even worse, it may be necessary to have that professor sign a withdrawal slip. The student may even say that it's because s/he is trying to avoid the professor. The professor, too, may prefer not to see the student, yet cannot normally say so. Can you imagine that. "You are welcome to take my class. Just make sure you behave". "No, thanks, professor, I would rather not have to see you ever again". Or maybe a student is racist or something. It's better to just discreetly avoid such issues by knowing who the professor is.
DeleteI think that's a situation that is rare enough that we could dal with it on a case by case basis. I admit, it never occurred to me. Our department head would make that call. The TBA policy solves the much larger peoblem of course shopping for the easy professor.
Delete@Monica, I would have no problem signing a withdrawal slip, or twenty (students don't need those anymore at my place, they just have to click a button). The "make sure you behave" is on the syllabus (stated slightly differently), and applies to all students. The very reasonable policy of all-TBA sections, would apply only to intro classes, and I'm unlikely to be teaching two of those to the same cohort of students.
DeleteI should have something productive to say here, as I've got similar enrollment and student eval issues, but I've never had it turn into an evaluation issue. I've been blessed with chairs who recognize that my field is necessary for the department's coverage and my rigor good for its reputation, and my service has filled in important admin gaps.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I kind of want to try the "prof tba" trick now to see if it affects my gen ed enrollments.
I introduced the upper-division course in my area when I came to the department. It is agreed to be important for students wishing to go further in the field, but the vast majority of our majors is "terminal". We have an enforced cut-off of 12 for upper-div courses, so that course never runs. As for rigor, in our case it is bad for my department's reputation (keeps students away), and it is certainly discouraged when it leads pass rates to drop below 60%. (For that to happen, very little "rigor" is needed.)
DeleteI have no idea if using enrollments in TT faculty evaluation is something that happens at other (land-grant, R1) places.
I'm not at an R1, so I can't say. It comes up in informal discussions, and schedule planning discussions here, certainly, but I've never heard it in official evaluation meetings.
Delete12 seems high to me; I don't think anywhere I've ever been has had a cutoff that high, and courses that are important to the majors can run with lower numbers... in sane departments.
One of the sad ironies of my career is that every time I've been hired, I've been told that (at least some of) the department wanted me to work to "raise the level" ... but the effect of grading like that on my student evaluations has hurt me repeatedly. (I'm tenured now, but even my tenure letter dinged me for my weak eval numbers.)
I've never heard of an R1 using enrollments for evaluation purposes, but nothing surprises me anymore. My own sense would be it should be either be TBA for all intro courses or for none. But what the fuck do I know?
DeleteI had to constantly deal with that while I was teaching.
ReplyDeleteMy greatest nemesis, my last department head, always claimed that "nobody wants to take your course" without providing any *reliable* evidence to support that statement. He was simply looking for an excuse to get rid of me and, by telling me that, hoped I'd up and quit.
The reality was more along the lines that my students didn't like that I expected them to earn their rewards and that they were in my course to learn something, not horse around. Seldom did I have a class in which someone wasn't whining about that. By comparison, those colleagues who were deemed popular and, thereby, "effective" gave out high marks like candy, amply rewarded mediocre work, and were, on the whole, slackers.
My mistake was to assume that the institution I was at was an institution of higher learning rather than Romper Room for young adults.
Honestly, it's time for you to game the system. Go to a handful of computers and create believable yet stellar reviews of yourself. Make fun of the earlier students for not realizing your awesomeness. Ask your friends to do the same. Fuck that other site.
ReplyDeleteMy thought exactly. Those who rely on data of questionable legitimacy (whether students or administrators) deserve to live with the consequences.
Delete"Peter K's class is kind of hard but it's worth it cause you learn a lot and at least he doesn't show up to class stinking of booze like you-know-who."
DeleteMuch better than (department head's name)!
Delete@Frankie Bow, have you been reading my page there? The first half of your sentence is almost a literal quote.
Delete@EC1, unfortunately the dept head doesn't currently teach, and before he became head he only taught honors and graduate courses.
@AM, @CC: well, that process started a couple of years ago, with help from people more competent than myself at mimicking student writing. On a very limited basis, for now.
Although the dept head doesn't currently teach, the course shoppers might not know that.
DeleteIt seems to me that at least one bottom line here is that universities not only don't want to invest time (and its near-equivalent, money) in teaching, they also don't want to invest in the evaluation of teaching. Basically, a college or university has three options for getting its classes taught:
ReplyDelete(1) most classes are taught by tenure-line faculty who evaluate each other, more frequently in the probationary years, and somewhat less frequently as time goes on. This takes some time if it's done well (people need to visit classes, read each others' course materials, talk to each other about teaching, etc., etc.), but that time tends to strengthen both the reviewers' and the reviewees' teaching, and the department and institution as a whole. (Tenure probably isn't central to this model; faculty in an all-contingent program, department, or institution could do the same.) This is (or maybe was; adjunctification is everywhere) the prevailing model at most institutions we'd consider "teaching-oriented" (so, (S)LACs, many directional state Us, community colleges with strong tenure, or at least full-time, traditions).
(2) most classes are taught by contingent faculty of some kind, while the reviewing is done by tenure-line faculty, who at least theoretically have more time for research thanks to reduced course loads enabled by the use of contingent faculty, but actually end up spending most of their "freed-up" time on reviewing and otherwise administering contingent faculty, or do a half-assed job of the evaluating, or both. This, as far as I can tell, is the predominant model at many R2s-striving-to-become-R1s (including my institution), and is probably all too common at all kinds of non-R1 institutions, from SLACs to directional state Us to community colleges, these days. It apparently looks good on a spreadsheet (otherwise, we wouldn't have it), but it doesn't work out all that well for any of the human beings directly involved (faculty of all ranks/kinds, and students, at least those who want/need an education, not just a diploma).
(3) hands-on teaching is done mostly by grad students, supervised and evaluated to a greater or lesser (usually lesser) degree by tenure-line faculty whose main responsibility (and evaluation criterion) is research. This, of course, is the R1 model. Ideally, it positions grad students as apprentices and tenure-line faculty as master craftspeople, and it can work pretty well if tenure-line faculty take their role seriously (which a few, but only, in my experience, a very few, of them do. It could also work if institutions emphasized and rewarded the master-teacher role, perhaps by requiring that grad students in their first few teaching semesters take parallel, double-credit, subject-and-pedagogy-oriented grad seminars, and making those seminars part of the tenure-line professor's relatively light teaching load -- which would probably result, for many professors, in some sort of alternating overload/non-teaching semester schedule, which would probably work out pretty well for everyone except the spreadsheet-watchers (which, of course, is why it doesn't happen). In practice, grad students serve as cheap labor, and receive very little guidance in or evaluation of their teaching (instead, they're lectured by their advisors, for whom they're often also teaching, on the need to keep the focus on "their work," which means their research). At wealthier R1s, there may be an intermediate layer of contingent faculty or staff who provide teaching guidance and evaluation of some sort, but the message is still pretty clear: the real work of the university is research, and teaching is secondary at best (maybe even third in the teaching/research/service triad if one takes into consideration nationally-prominent service roles). This is also the model that trains (or, in the area of teaching, doesn't train) most tenure-line faculty, and so influences the other two (especially the second, which is so common at institutions trying to climb the prestige ladder).
DeleteThere are plenty of hybrids of the above models, of course, and growing numbers of contingent faculty (and the growing service burden for the few remaining tenure-line faculty members) are the rule pretty much everywhere. Obviously, I prefer the first model (and think we were better off when it was more common, if not at R1s, then at least at R2s/directional Us that weren't necessarily focused on becoming R1s). But it seems that most university administrators are striving for the third (and, when potential grad students don't show up in sufficient numbers, as I suspect will increasingly be the case, settling for the second). Trying to move more institutions of higher learning toward the first (which I believe was once the dominant model, though maybe I'm romanticizing the past there) doesn't, sadly, seem to be on the table.
Our model is a blend: the pre-Calculus type classes are taught by graduate students and (full-time, long-term) lecturers. Other lower-division primarily by lecturers, with a few sections taught by TT faculty and occasionally by advanced GS. Our faculty has about a 4:3 TT:NTT ratio, and only a handful of adjuncts. Annual reviews in both cases are entirely done by the head, with the dean's office as the only instance of appeal (and they just rubber-stamp everything, summarily.) I think the more experienced lecturers supervise newer ones in some sense, and somebody must supervise GS teaching, but I have no idea who that is. Rank and file faculty (TT, at least) do not get involved in evaluating teaching or in training anyone (or in curricular discussions for that matter, speaking here as a recent member of both the undergraduate and graduate committees.)
DeleteI think an experiment might help illuminate things. Next go-round, list your Dept Head as the instructor of record. Meanwhile, flood RMP with a bunch of "undeserved" negative reviews of the DH.
ReplyDeleteInspired by Beaker Ben's comment in another post.
I have a reputation as a rigorous, demanding, uncompromising, mathematically intensive, mad scientist, who positively enjoys drinking out of a fire hose if the water sparkles and thinks his students should too, and who, if legitimately angered by laziness or sloppiness or incompetence or thoughtlessness, will staple a snowflake's dick to the floor just as soon as go fishing. I enjoy cultivating this reputation, very much on purpose. NO PROBLEM!
ReplyDeleteMore seriously: I do have to tone down my awesome power in my general-ed-intro-astronomy-for-non-majors class, or else I will frighten them. It's not easy. The engineering and science majors get it full strength, though. Some of the better ones like it that way.
And of course: I have tenure, and may soon once again serve as department Chair. Getting tenure was a struggle for me, but now that I have it, I'm going to use it.
If the-site-that-shall-not-be-named is a problem: for any less-than-flattering ratings, click "report this rating" and demand it be removed. I find they often remove ones that are genuinely libelous, if you make the case convincingly that it is libelous. If you think this is Orwellian, remember that libel isn't free speech. Neither is sexual innuendo, and neither should be personal affronts.
Well, what I call "gen-ed" is lower-division math for engineering/science majors. (I don't teach the other kind.) But there's a difference: Physics/Astronomy or Chemistry offer one or two large sections of their intro-level courses for the STEM crowd, so students have to choose based on scheduling, not instructor. For the course I referred to in my OP (soph-level for STEM majors) we offer at least eight sections every semester, so students can easily section-shop, or wait until next term (I even have a senior or two taking it.) And you're right, the better ones do like it "full strength". All three of them (of about 20), and I doubt they bother doing evaluations, or going on "that site" for anything.
ReplyDeleteTenure doesn't help, if you have dept chairs who feel a need to hold one person as an example, to show the dean they are "serious about teaching". True, I can't be fired (or not easily), but also no raises, promotions, etc.
Yes, I've had a friend report the more libelous comments. Some of them were taken down, but sometimes they are confirmed, or a positive comment disappears mysteriously. Makes you wonder who is "managing" my page.