Student Evaluations
So today I got called in to Random Head Honcho's office at BCMU to discuss my student evaluation scores. Turns out I am supposed to engage in self-reflection about my teaching practices, taking the students' input into account.
SO. Maybe all y'all can help me with that.
On the written comment form, one question is "If you were asked how the instructor could help you learn more successfully in this course, what would you recommend?"
My hand to God, I am not cherry-picking these answers. This is all of 'em.
"Classes be more entertaining." (I have no words.)
"She should want the student to succeed." (This is pretty damning, if true, but what leads the student to think I don't want him/her to succeed?)
"Be more helpful when students come ask for help." (None did. I had exactly zero visitors to my office hours.)
"Stop saying Fab to everything." (I do say that a lot, and I remember from my own undergrad days that instructor's particular verbal tics can really get on your nerves after a semester, but....honestly.)
"A new teacher."
"Go to their office hours and hope to get a spot." (This person, I guess, misunderstood the question and thought she was supposed to give advice to a future student. I guess. Again, not so hard to get a spot at my office hours.)
"Get students more motivated." (This is one of the more helpful comments in the batch.)
"Make the class harder. Everything was stuff we already know." (This student brought this problem to my attention during the semester. She probably should have gone straight to 015. Since it's an outlier, I can probably safely disregard this one.)
"Don't be so mean."
"Nothing, she did what she could." (The only positive comment in the bunch. I think I know which student this was, too--she wrote in her journals a lot about what a pain it was that no one in the class did any work.)
"Didn't answer the question." (My best guess is that this student meant that he/she didn't want to answer the question, but it may mean that I didn't answer students' questions, or that I shouldn't have. I'm a little mystified)
"More positive toward the class."
"She just talk like we already know the information which is not the case." (If this was more detailed, it could be useful feedback...on the other hand, I probably say, "Does anyone have any questions?" almost as often as I say "Fab," so it's not like this person didn't have a chance to ask for more detail on whatever information she felt I was glossing over too quickly.)
"Learn more material to do with English 15." (Again, this might be useful if I knew what it meant. On the other hand, who knows what the student thinks English 015 is like, and if his/her perception is at all accurate?)
"Learn how to teach and grade."
"Quit."
"Quit." (These two were probably sitting next to each other.)
"Lower your standards." (Second time for this idea. I'm going to be humming the Carlos Mencia parody "Lower the standards" for the rest of the day, at least.)
"She was a horrible teacher and person." (I can't begin to imagine how many meetings I'd have to go to if I wrote on a student's paper that he/she was a horrible writer and person, or even just a horrible writer.)
"You should lower your standards when it comes to the papers."
"Lower standards for this class!" (Hat trick!)
"Make it more interesting Also to change grading (very strict and not lean)" (Last word doesn't make sense, but that's what it says.)
"Don't be so demanding. Don't grade us like Wall Stret Journal Writers. Your expectations were very high." (I'm going to count this as "lower the standards" #5. I'm amused and a little mystified by the WSJ reference.)
"Nothing really." (I guess that counts as positive too.)
" " (Left blank)
"Don't even try. This is an English 4 class it was supposed to prepare us for higher writing and it didn't. The grading is too harsh for the level we were at." (This student says elsewhere on the form that "the majority of the class got D's," which is not the case. I explained to the class--several times--that the grading on essays would be strict, but in-class assignments and homework would be leniently graded, and on journals they'd get full credit as long as they did it, so it all balances out. The only people who got D's or F's were those who screwed up very, very badly.)
"To actually tell us what she wants instead of assuming we already know." (Like the similar comment about ten lines up, this one gets at something important--but again, there's no shortage whatsoever of opportunities to ask question if I'm not being clear enough about what they're supposed to do.)
So, you can see, the majority of these comments are childish, mean-spirited, and/or stupid. What am I supposed to take away from this? I'm inclined to engage in serious self-reflection about getting a different job. I mean honestly. I probably am a little crankier than would be ideal, but look what kind of spoiled brats I have to deal with.
SO. Maybe all y'all can help me with that.
On the written comment form, one question is "If you were asked how the instructor could help you learn more successfully in this course, what would you recommend?"
My hand to God, I am not cherry-picking these answers. This is all of 'em.
"Classes be more entertaining." (I have no words.)
"She should want the student to succeed." (This is pretty damning, if true, but what leads the student to think I don't want him/her to succeed?)
"Be more helpful when students come ask for help." (None did. I had exactly zero visitors to my office hours.)
"Stop saying Fab to everything." (I do say that a lot, and I remember from my own undergrad days that instructor's particular verbal tics can really get on your nerves after a semester, but....honestly.)
"A new teacher."
"Go to their office hours and hope to get a spot." (This person, I guess, misunderstood the question and thought she was supposed to give advice to a future student. I guess. Again, not so hard to get a spot at my office hours.)
"Get students more motivated." (This is one of the more helpful comments in the batch.)
"Make the class harder. Everything was stuff we already know." (This student brought this problem to my attention during the semester. She probably should have gone straight to 015. Since it's an outlier, I can probably safely disregard this one.)
"Don't be so mean."
"Nothing, she did what she could." (The only positive comment in the bunch. I think I know which student this was, too--she wrote in her journals a lot about what a pain it was that no one in the class did any work.)
"Didn't answer the question." (My best guess is that this student meant that he/she didn't want to answer the question, but it may mean that I didn't answer students' questions, or that I shouldn't have. I'm a little mystified)
"More positive toward the class."
"She just talk like we already know the information which is not the case." (If this was more detailed, it could be useful feedback...on the other hand, I probably say, "Does anyone have any questions?" almost as often as I say "Fab," so it's not like this person didn't have a chance to ask for more detail on whatever information she felt I was glossing over too quickly.)
"Learn more material to do with English 15." (Again, this might be useful if I knew what it meant. On the other hand, who knows what the student thinks English 015 is like, and if his/her perception is at all accurate?)
"Learn how to teach and grade."
"Quit."
"Quit." (These two were probably sitting next to each other.)
"Lower your standards." (Second time for this idea. I'm going to be humming the Carlos Mencia parody "Lower the standards" for the rest of the day, at least.)
"She was a horrible teacher and person." (I can't begin to imagine how many meetings I'd have to go to if I wrote on a student's paper that he/she was a horrible writer and person, or even just a horrible writer.)
"You should lower your standards when it comes to the papers."
"Lower standards for this class!" (Hat trick!)
"Make it more interesting Also to change grading (very strict and not lean)" (Last word doesn't make sense, but that's what it says.)
"Don't be so demanding. Don't grade us like Wall Stret Journal Writers. Your expectations were very high." (I'm going to count this as "lower the standards" #5. I'm amused and a little mystified by the WSJ reference.)
"Nothing really." (I guess that counts as positive too.)
" " (Left blank)
"Don't even try. This is an English 4 class it was supposed to prepare us for higher writing and it didn't. The grading is too harsh for the level we were at." (This student says elsewhere on the form that "the majority of the class got D's," which is not the case. I explained to the class--several times--that the grading on essays would be strict, but in-class assignments and homework would be leniently graded, and on journals they'd get full credit as long as they did it, so it all balances out. The only people who got D's or F's were those who screwed up very, very badly.)
"To actually tell us what she wants instead of assuming we already know." (Like the similar comment about ten lines up, this one gets at something important--but again, there's no shortage whatsoever of opportunities to ask question if I'm not being clear enough about what they're supposed to do.)
So, you can see, the majority of these comments are childish, mean-spirited, and/or stupid. What am I supposed to take away from this? I'm inclined to engage in serious self-reflection about getting a different job. I mean honestly. I probably am a little crankier than would be ideal, but look what kind of spoiled brats I have to deal with.
posted by ProfessorDog at 9:30 PM
13 Comments:
They sound like the twits in my classes when I went back to college. Lazy little whiners.
welcome back.. I had decided you were nevah gonna write again and had deleted my bookmark here.. Saw yr comment on anudder good blawg (sexedhied) and clicked, and Voila.. yr bacccck
Dont go away so long again, pweese..
As for the comments.. they're kids. Ignore the runts. But, if anyone (above you) is gonna read their answers, then they need to revise the Qs so they lead to specifics.
For example:
List one assignment that was difficult.
Tell how you would do that assignment differently if asked to do it again.
Tell how you would present this assignment to a future class to make it easier.
or something like that.. hell, I am not a questionairre (sp) maker, tho I have often thought a survey taker would be a +fab+ career.
SL
Ahhh, the oh so useful student evaluations. One semester, I received these two comments from the same course:
SS is the best teacher in the department.
SS is the worse teacher in the department.
I just posted them on my office door side by side.
I had a calc prof write
"What is wrong with you?!?" on a test. He drew a little cartoon tombstone around the grade of my roommates test and wrote "You just wasted thousands of dollars not to learn this" on another's. Good teacher though.
I know many people live and die by the student-feedback thing. Not me. I know I would see exactly what you are getting.
And yet.... Who do they come to see, to tell me how much they were prepared for college?? Hmm? You've got to hold them to high standards!
So, I would laugh as I read these, and have another margarita.
This is why student evals are (in my brilliant opinion) completely f---ing useless. Last semester I had a student accuse me of trying to commit "death by Powerpoint" and another student write that I went too fast during lectures and didn't spend enough time on each slide. Oh - and because I don't teach English, but expect their papers to be written well enough that I can understand them, I get a lot of, "Not fair! This is not an English class. She shouldn't grade us on grammar and stuff, only content." I'll do my best and that's all I can do. Some students will love me; some will hate me - regardless it's all the same: Are they in a position to truly judge our work? I'm not sure they are. Hey, I rambled along and really didn't say anything. I guess being in academia HAS had a serious effect on me!
Holy Christ!!!!
These sound like the EXACT same comments from my [bad] students!!!
Was like 1/2 your class functionally illiterate?
Was it obvious that most of the class never did the readings?
Could you tell that the people who told you to quit were also the ones who kept begging for special treatment because they were always misbehaving, late, absent, not following instructions, and/or plagiarizing from online sources?
I can top you:
A student accused me of advancing a homosexual agenda in class and targeting black students with false accusations of plagiarism. I guess that highlighted text in their papers that I found EXACTLY DUPLICATED those websites was just a professorial trick of mine.
Keep the faith. In my same class, several other students said stuff like: "Sensitive to a fault," which kinda makes you wonder if the plagiarists were in the same class as the lazy slackers of entitlement.
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students should know that they are supposed to have adequate grammar skills to write any kind of reports or papers.
it's not acceptable when they argue that they don't need to write clearly if papers are not for the English class.
One is really important thing for students is 1WS. If you take it into advantage, you'll get a great mark for your writing task, and more free time for favourite subject. Just use it, and you'll never regret.
I am a college student, and I do not want to say this, but I HATE writing course evals. As you mentioned, the questionnaires for the evaluation does not always lead students to give a positive feedback, but rather it wants them to write what they did not like about the course or the professor. Instead of asking a question like, "If you were asked how the instructor could help you learn more successfully in this course, what would you recommend?",
I think that the questions should be revised into something like this:
What was the most difficult assignment?
What was your favorite part of the course?
What should be done in order to improve learning in this course?
I feel like students do not know that the instructors actually read the comments on the evaluations and use them as a tool to improve their teaching.
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