Monday, June 11, 2012

Student Evaluations

What do you think of student evaluations? And, perhaps more importantly, what do you do with them. I've heard of a number of responses to student evaluations, including:
  • ignoring them: they're not a good measure of teaching effectiveness
  • reading them for trends in what students like and dislike
  • mocking the students for not "getting" what the class was about
  • taking comments like "assigns too much reading" as a badge of honor
can we learn teaching strategies from the Bachelor?
probably more than we can learn dating strategies
I find evaluations extraordinarily useful and I usually conduct an informal one midway throughout the semester. What I get most from the evaluations is 1) what I am doing right. Over and over students comment on how they appreciate the relaxing opening (I usually spend the first 5 minutes easing them into the topic with some humor) and how I layer the lectures (always with a few minutes of where we were last time at the beginning and where we are going at the ending ... I learned this strategy by enduring "The Bachelor" and seeing how this inculcation approach worked wonders).

Criticisms range, depending on the class and temperament, but I find that if there are similar complaints, then something needs to be addressed. This past term, the #1 complaint was that I did not grade their essays. It was an extremely large class (170) and the university allots grading money for these sorts of classes. I explained this to the class, but some were still miffed. Any suggestions for how to address this or appease students? What do you do with evaluations?
Posted by Edward J. Blum at
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2 comments:

  1. Lilian Calles BargerJune 12, 2012 at 7:54 PM

    What I got on the negative side was - grading (writing) is subjective, we want a chronological standard book instead of the the monographs and primary readings, too much talk about reform-- slavery ( this was survey 1) and just give us the facts. Positives - I never had history presented in this interesting way, I didn't realize how much religion was implicated in American history, and I like reading primary sources. My general attitude is read through these and then forget about it. I am still not going to use a standard survey text, and there will be writing all along the way.

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  2. I love evaluations, and I love the idea that you do them midway through the semester, something I'm going to implement next time around for sure. Why not learn what's failing and make some changes? I've also incorporated a lot of the suggestions I've got from the end of the semester evals as well, mostly "stop swearing" and put less words on the slides, two things I've made considerable headway in doing. I think also there is a psychological advantage to evals, basically the fact that students get a voice in how things are going, even if it's just blowing off steam. We all need to do that, so I think there is something therapeutic about them as well, which is more important for them than for us!

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