Professors Strike Back?
A mocking blog called Rate Your Students has emerged in response - you can read about some unbeloved students in this post (Head-Nodders, Laptop Kids, Winter Flip Floppers, and Some Nefarious Wannabe Gangsters. Where is that Walmart Application?).
Don't get me wrong - I'm all for the course evaluations that are typical at most campuses. Because everyone (who shows up) completes one, you have a full sample of students - not just the angry and elated - and narrative sections allow students to provide meaningful feedback on how to tweak the course in the future. Propositioning is generally not included, though students still throw in the occasional pediatric temper tantrum.
I'm undecided on whether and how colleges should make course evaluations public. On one hand, the public release of formal evaluations would help students decide among many courses. On the other hand, a student-driven evaluation system creates incentives to pander to Gen Facebook, and further encourages the "I'm paying, so I deserve an easy A" consumerism of many students.
So I'm on the fence about the role of course evaluations in assessing college teaching. Readers, what's your take? How should profs' teaching be evaluated?
Comments
Wait a second... when did a survey become "evaluation"?
Posted by: Sherman Dorn | January 30, 2008 8:05 AM
This is a double-barreled post, eduwonkette. Are you interested in how colleges should evaluate faculty teaching, or what should be done with students' end-of-term course evaluations? Let me be provocative (a skoolboy's prerogative) and say that I don't think that end-of-term course evaluations should be treated as a measure of what students have learned, regardless of what the students have said. That's because the depth and scope of that learning may not be evident on the last day of the semester. It may not be until sometime later, when the course and its content are juxtaposed with different contexts and subsequent learning experiences, that what was learned in the course might come into focus. I'd rather rely on a student's retrospective account a year later. In my own experience as a student, I haven't always been able to predict what would stick with me (or transfer, the more technical learning term) after a course is over.
(Of course, maybe I'm just rationalizing the fact that some of my students come away from my classes saying, "What the hell was that all about?")
Posted by: skoolboy | January 30, 2008 8:54 AM
Sherman and Skoolboy,
You're right that there are multiple questions posed in this post:
1) How should learning be evaluated in college?
2) Are course evaluations a fair and comprehensive measure of college teaching? (Of course not.)
3) What should universities do with student course evaluations?
4) What are the potential risks/benefits to students and profs of making them public?
The postponed evaluation approach is interesting, skoolboy. I can recall two very negative course evaluations that I wrote in college. Given the chance to write them again, one of the two profs would receive a positive evaluation.
Posted by: eduwonkette | January 30, 2008 9:42 AM