“They rip open the envelopes and say, ‘Oh my God, what happened?’ ”
That’s psychology professor Russell Fernald’s summary of the faculty reactions he’s seen to course evaluation forms. But Fernald, who headed a committee that revised the forms in 1996, thinks there’s a lot to be gleaned from them.
“If you really want to learn what students think, you have to indicate that you’re taking it seriously, and give them time to do it, and show them it is important to you,” says the director of the human biology program. “And when students feel empowered like that, they’re not going to write junky stuff.”
Student evaluations typically are used in three ways. They can help improve teaching and help students choose courses, and they also are included in faculty files for promotion and tenure decisions. “I’ve heard students question whether the evaluations really have any impact on promotion and tenure decisions because they have the view that, ‘Here’s this tenured professor, and he’s really terrible,’” says registrar Roger Printup. “So I’m pleased that they actually are used.”
Fernald does receive the occasional content-free response, such as “This is the man!” or “Dresses nicely,” from his students. But he argues that the revised forms are an improvement over the previous version that, he says, “asked, basically, ‘Did the faculty member show up?’ and had virtually no diagnostic information.”
Implemented in the 1996-97 academic year, the course evaluations have fill-in-the-bubble categories to rate an instructor’s clarity, ability to engage students, interaction with students and course content on a five-point scale. Students can also write extensive comments about textbooks, assignments and exams, plus suggestions for overall improvement. A student from each class collects the forms and delivers them to the registrar’s office, where they’re scanned and then given to the faculty member—but not until grades have been submitted. A statistical summary goes to the instructor’s department chair or program director, and to the appropriate dean. And the ASSU receives a tear-off commentary to use in its online course guide.
Faculty also receive a summary sheet that shows their scores in relation to other faculty in their school. “If the mean course evaluation for social sciences is 4.0, and their overall evaluation is 3.5, it helps to put it in some kind of context,” Printup says.
Those concerned about their scores can seek assistance at the Center for Teaching and Learning. “Part of the problem is that some faculty see giving a lecture as assembling all the essential information, and they don’t try to turn a lecture into a coherent narrative,” says center director Michele Marincovich, ’68. “But even in science and engineering you need some kind of narrative structure, to make it interesting and clear.”
One popular instructor, associate professor of art history and of classics Jody Maxmin, encourages her students to be “brutally honest and as negative as they want to be.” She hands out evaluation forms before Dead Week so students can take them back to their dorms and spend time with the open-ended questions. “I tell them to think about suggestions that will help people who take the class in the future,” Maxmin says. Then she adds a caveat: “Of course, the way you stay in touch with students in the 21st century and know whether a course is addressing their interests and needs is not by handing out these forms. You stay in touch with students in office hours and by e-mail.”
