Students Evaluating Teachers (For College Students)

[filsteal]

I've taught college classes for several semesters now, and I get to see the student evaluation forms after the semester is over.

Ours have two parts: a bubble section, and a "write things" section. I would say that only about 25% of students actually write things in the "write things" section, but for those that do, I think their comments can be pretty helpful.

As for the bubble sections, you obviously can't tell if they took it seriously or not, but in my experience, the faculty's opinions of who the best instructors are tends to agree with the students' opinions, so enough people take it seriously to have an effect over the "noise."

[orange]

at my college, the eval is like a 2 second bubble thing that noone takes seriously.

[Rick Nebiolo]

[ QUOTE ]
Do you use Rate My Professors? If so, are you more candid on this site than on evaluation forms?

[/ QUOTE ]

John,

I've only looked at ratemyprofessors.com twice. Do professors in general care about this site?

~ Rick

[John Cole]

Rick,

For the most part, not really.

Still, though, I like the idea that the opinions are unsolicited and anonymous--although I can guess at some students who wrote some of mine. Some research also shows a strong correlation between this site and and other forms of student evaluation. I think that students who rate me as being easy probably did well in the course. And keep in mind, they don't have access to other grades, so one student's "A" may be the only one in the class.

It's also interesting to check the ratings of top professors, the real stars in their fields, and read comments about them.

John

[SoloAJ]

John,

I take the evaluations seriously only if the teacher was exceptionally great or exceptionally bad. For the great teachers, I let them know the things that I enjoyed and what made the class really click for me. For the bad teachers, I use what I deem constructive criticism (and I assume that they, in turn, ignore it entirely). I know a lot of people who just write mean stuff, but I don't see how that helps the professors.

If it is a teacher that was just okay or didn't really affect the content of the class for me, I just do the bubble things without leaving extra comments.

My basic recommendation is to show that the evals mean a lot to you and that you are going to take them seriously; that is the best way to got a few extra students to take them seriously.