Students Evaluating Teachers (For College Students)

[John Cole]

This year I am on a committee responsible for designing student evaluation forms. I have a few questions. First, how seriously do you take these forms? Do you use evaluations as revenge against teachers you don't like? Do you feel you are always capable of evaluating teachers and what they do?

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

Overall, would you prefer to answer more questions or fewer?

[Jamougha]

There was a study done - I don't have a reference - on how people rate their teachers. They found that if they showed people a ten-second clip of a lecture with no sound, the average grade they gave the teacher was not significantly different (in a statistical sense) from the average grade the teacher got from a class that he or she had taught for an entire semester.

So I don't think teacher evaluation forms are useful on the whole. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[secretprankster]

At least where I go to school, they are done awfully. Generic bubble-in responses given at the end of class in the last week before the final. People rush through them and stuff them in the confidential envelope. I can't see what they're gleaning that couldn't be otherwise readily apparent.

[Kimbell175113]

They are done awfully, but a suprising number of students take them seriously. I'm not sure whether the bubble responses are meaningful, but the written comments almost certainly are.

[Scary_Tiger]

If they just cut it down to like 10 bubble questions (from the 50) and asked for comments it would be more useful. Sorry comments don't fit in some teacher evaluating computer, but they're the only things of interest you'll learn from these forms.

[katyseagull]

I'm not a student anymore but my experience was much like secretprankster.


My advice would be to keep the evaluations short. Things I would include if I were making a form -

1. Did the teacher speak loudly and clearly?
2. Did this teacher take time to explain concepts and was he/she willing to take time to answer questions?
3. Did the tests reflect the material taught in class?

And I agree with Scary Tiger and Kimbell. Comments are more meaningful.

[jjshabado]

It doesn't matter how you design the forms if everybody knows they are meaningless. In most schools almost nothing is done about bad feedback. If your evaluations are actually meaningful make sure thats explained when the forms are distributed. If they're not, just give a piece of paper with a smiley face-minus the smile. Have the students finish the face with a smile if they like the teacher, a frown if they didn't and anything in between.

It'll be just as useful.

[Shadowrun]

The evaluations i get for my profs is pretty extensive, at least to me. People take up to 10 mins to fill them up.

I just put down the same ranking for each category based on the teacher. So if i think they are awesome i will give them 5's across the board.

[Quicksilvre]

[ QUOTE ]
If they just cut it down to like 10 bubble questions (from the 50) and asked for comments it would be more useful. Sorry comments don't fit in some teacher evaluating computer, but they're the only things of interest you'll learn from these forms.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is exactly correct. I'm currently in my junior year, and I've done plenty of these already. They do have a space for comments, but only after pushing through 40-50 multiple choice questions. The folks here seem to use generic forms for all of the classes, so a lot of the questions asked aren't even appropriate: I've been asked many times whether a class has increased my understanding of other people, and I'm a math major taking mostly math courses.

Nonetheless, I do take them mostly seriously, more so with each semester. It would be a lot better if a professor passed these out at the beginning of the last class instead of the end. The way it's done now everyone tries to fly through it just so they can get out.

[qdmcg]

I've always taken my evaluations seriously (the ones that I have written). I agree that the generic response bubbles can be a bit long and when students look at a list of 20+ bubbles, they are sometimes just going to start filling them in without looking. I think that ideally the majority of this stuff should be done through comments.


Not really sure if angry students will write negative stuff because of their grade. However, if this is a suspected problem, possibly consider moving the evaluations to the middle of the semester instead of towards the end. Students will already have formed an impression of their professor and their grade will still be much more in the air.

Also consider not forcing students to fill these out at the end of class. My University does them online and are optional. I would suspect that this improves the quality of responses.