Nov 20, 2018
When I was a student, I never thought about how my course evaluations would affect anyone. I viewed evaluations as the time to “let rip” against whatever I thought was wrong with the course, the professor, the content, or the pedagogy. So naturally, as a professor, receiving that link telling me I can access the results of my own course evals fills me with dread.
Me reading funny “mean tweets” by students at a Westover Honors College event. These made me so nervous I couldn’t stop laughing.
I pour most of who I am into the courses I teach. I spend weekends and evenings planning and researching, and I wrap up most of my work days grading or assessing work. The courses I create are an output of my intelligence, work ethic, professionalization, creativity, and overall competence. Subjecting all of that to the opinions of 18-year-olds who hate writing terrifies me.
I realize now how much more useful my evaluations as a student could have been if I had understood their purpose. If I knew who had to read them at the end of the semester, I may have been more careful with what I said. In faithfulness to this probably-idealistic assessment of my own student self, I seek feedback from my classes in a variety of ways to help offset the pain of end-of-semester evaluations.
First, I informally collect student opinions throughout the semester. When Jessica visits my office, I might ask her how she finds the reading or what she thinks of an upcoming assignment. When I sought feedback on the livegrading technique I tried (mentioned here), for example, I asked students who received a range of grades whether it was helpful and if they’d recommend I do it again. Every student I asked confirmed they appreciated the technique. 5 stars! Would recommend!
However, in person feedback might be tainted by what anonymous feedback is never tainted by– a desire to not hurt my feelings. So I also ask my classes to provide written, in-class feedback commenting on things they thought worked in the course and what they would change and why.
I stress how important it is to say what they’d change and why as opposed to simply stating, “I didn’t like the readings. They were terrible.” I remind them how feedback like that is not actionable at all. Because I don’t know what criteria is being used to arrive at “terrible,” I am left with only two options:
- scrap everything because it’s all terrible, or
- ignore this feedback and chalk it up to some flaw in the student.
In reality, a middle ground would be more acceptable, but without any criteria or suggestions for improvement, I might make an even worse misstep in trying to fix what I don’t know is wrong.
Finally, I remind my students to complete the course evals at the end of the semester. When I do, I explain what we use them for– hiring, firing in some cases, promotion, course revisions, and reasons for chocolate purchases– and mention ways I’ve used specific feedback in the past to improve the course for them. I also tell them it’s helpful to know what they found most useful in the course so that I can make revisions knowing what students thought improved the course experience for them. I have also informed students of what past suggestions have asked to change and why I haven’t made those changes, so they have some foundation for what limits might constrain course revision.
These methods of soliciting student feedback often take the edge off of reading the end-of-semester evaluations. This is because I’ve already encountered what students aren’t appreciating about a class, and in some ways, I’ve even managed to mitigate those issues before the course finishes.
Does my heart still pound while I wait for the evals to download? Well, yes. But I usually only require a little bit of comfort food before I bounce back and start thinking about ways to improve the next time I teach the class.