At the end of the quarter I will ask you to fill out course evaluations. I have found that many students do not know how to fill them out and provide useful information to me, so I am listing below some of the things that should and should not be included in course evaluations.
1. Presentation Remember you are evaluating the course, one component of which is the faculty member’s teaching. It is not a personal evaluation of the faculty member. It is an evaluation of their professional behavior as a teacher or lack of it. Comments about body weight, dress, hairstyle, etc. are inappropriate. I do not use this information about you in assessing your grade. It is not appropriate to use this in assessing the course. It is appropriate to mention whether you could hear me or not, whether I spoke distinctly or not. If you can’t hear or see, change your seat. If you don’t mention this problem during the course, it is not appropriate to criticize me for not correcting a problem I didn’t know existed. It is not appropriate to mention whether the room was too cold or too hot or the blinds didn’t work. I have limited choice in or control over the classrooms in which I teach. I can mention problems but have no guarantee that they will be corrected.
Your comments should be specific with regard to what you think was useful or not useful. "This course sucks." "Great class." "Too much reading." "Too hard." These comments do not provide useful information about what you thought worked or didn’t work in trying to teach you. They are emotion laden and subjective. I have no idea of your workload. You chose that not me. I have no idea how you decide something is "too much" or "not enough." The purpose of the evaluation is to learn what aspects of the presentation enabled the student to learn and what didn’t. If there are 30 people in the class, there will be 30 different opinions. I know we can’t please everyone. I will select those things that seemed to help most of the students learn and repeat them. I will try to change those that seem ineffective and develop new or different ways of delivering the course material. Some ways are effective even if students don’t like doing them. I use them because I know they work in teaching you the material even if you find them boring or repetitive. That is not my criteria.
2. Course materials Evaluate the texts, videos, slide presentations in the light of their effectiveness. While holding your attention is important, it is not the main goal of a text. The main goal is to convey information and understanding of course materials. Boring materials may still do this. You will have to learn to read for understanding not entertainment. We will try to choose interesting books but the main criteria we use is whether the book covers the topics we are teaching and provides a good sense of the field in which we are working. It is not always easy to find texts on every topic I teach. Sometimes I must choose a text we do not particularly like because there is nothing else. Students have little knowledge about textbook availability and quality. This is the professional decision made on my part based on my experiences as a student and teacher. Dated materials may still be the best materials given their quality and the point being made. The most recent is not always the best. There are some topics that will be inherently interesting to you and not to other students. I want to know if you can read or see something and extract the necessary material from it. This ability is one of the skills that we are teaching in the course. The level of the book depends on the level of the class. I may choose texts predominantly written for scholars. This is a scholarly endeavor. Sometimes I will choose books that are for a more general readership if I feel they offer something of value in teaching the concepts and topics of the course. I like to provide a variety where I can of scholarly work that includes primary sources where possible. It is my understanding that you are to rise to the level of the material and that by this you learn.
3. Assignments Assignments will vary in difficulty as well as content. Sometimes I want to teach you certain skills and repetition helps to do that. Sometimes I want to teach you new perspectives so I will have assignments that ask you to do things you haven’t done before. I will try to challenge you. The level of the course will help determine this. While doing an assignment it is often difficult to assess how valuable it is to your learning. Sometimes students get into patterns of learning that they are comfortable with and just want to repeat them. I know you can do certain things and therefore will ask you to go beyond that. Sometimes I will give you assignments that seem basic to help you review those skills. You may not be able to assess the value of the assignment until much later. Think about the goal of the assignment not just whether you liked doing it or not. I know people learn differently so I may provide a variety of assignments to take that into account.
4. Exams There are various ways to test how well you are learning. Tests are not just for the purpose of giving you a grade. They are to assess what level of skills and knowledge you have mastered and how well you have learned them. Exams report back to you whether you have learned the things I think you should have from the material taught. They also tell me whether I have been successful in covering a topic. I will try to help you prepare for them in a variety of ways. To be effective, a test must be just that. It must be a challenge not just a walk through. If you know what will be tested before hand, it ceases to be a test and becomes an exercise. I know that some people do well in some formats and some in others so I try to vary the types of formats I use.
5. Grading I will do my best to give you a fair assessment of the work you have done. I sometimes grade on a curve to adjust for differences between classes and variation in my teaching. When I read you exams and papers I try not to know whose paper I am reading so I grade the work in front of me not the student. I structure some assignments so I can do them piecemeal so that I can read the work in answer to a question. The grade does not reflect what I think of you as a person. It is not based on previous work done in this or other classes. It is an assessment of the piece of work turned in. I have no way of knowing what you get in other classes or whether this was difficult or easy for you or whether it took you a long time or a short time to accomplish. These factors do not go into the grade. It is not possible to grade the content apart from its presentation. Sloppiness, poor spelling and grammar will always affect the grade even if they are not specifically calculated as part of the grade. You should try to do two drafts of a paper. Have at least one other person read it and give you their response. This helps to check for inconsistencies, typos and other errors that can affect the total presentation.
If I wanted to get uniformly good evaluations I would just manipulate you by giving easy exams, covering easy topics, providing food in class, wearing designer clothes, etc. I do not disrespect you enough to do that. I am trying to teach you the material and provide my own knowledge of the field not found in texts etc. I devote my energies toward that, not personal aggrandizement. I do not see my role as entertainer. I do not aim to please you but to teach you and that may cause you discomfort. As I teach a variety of students in the course, the course is not made easy or difficult because it is general education or a major course. The topic to be covered and the best way I can teach it determine how I will teach the course. I do not offer "Ethnicity for Dummies," or other such courses. I expect you to be able to read critically, to be able to write English properly (spelling and grammar count) and to think and write logically. These are important things to learn at the college level.
When people are asked to evaluate something, we tend to look for what is wrong. Criticism has come to imply a negative evaluation. Do not only tell me what you think I am doing wrong but also tell me where you think I am successful. This enables me to be able to identify those things that are working from those that aren’t.
I thank you for the time you take to a thoughtful assessment of your experience in the class.
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