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Re: Are student evaluations useful?



On Tue, 18 Nov 1997, Rauber, Joel Phys wrote:

A)
The form we used several years ago had a question along the lines of: " My
instructor made me think". They had to rate each question 1-5, 1 meaning
agree most strongly with the statement.

One instructor in our department, who usually gets worse than average
evaluations and who also has higher than average standards in his classes,
would always be rated quite well on this question (near 1) compared to the
other questions. I had noticed similar phenomena in my own evaluations.

My interpretation is that in the student's mind it was *bad* teaching if the
instructor made them think, they didn't like this guy so they rated him bad
everywhere; little realizing that they were accidently rating the instructor
well for this question!

Oh come now, Joel! It's a cute story--and it *does* suit my mood right
now for reasons we needn't go into--but you don't *really* believe that;
do you?

John
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A. John Mallinckrodt http://www.intranet.csupomona.edu/~ajm
Professor of Physics mailto:ajmallinckro@csupomona.edu
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Cal Poly Pomona fax:909-869-5090
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