Re: Teacher evaluations for 1st year physics

[Jim Green <JMGreen@sisna.com>]

Sue, I have a suggestion (which I will deny ever uttering):  Give three
exams (beside the usual quizzes). 

The first one is very challenging -- resulting in an average of about where
you want the average to be.  You sympathize with the people with the low
scores and offer to provide extra help in your office or classroom in the
afternoon -- ie make a real attempt to get them motivated.  .  

The second test is easy enough to get that average to a high grade (at some
schools -- like Stanford that would be a very high B).  You tell that class
how wonderful they are doing and heap praise on the previous low scores.

The student evaluation of teacher is then given.  You get high marks.

The third test is a killer == which places the overall class average about
where you feel it should be -- and the twits fail. 

This procedure WORKS, but alas is disgusting.  But then the usual
administrator is disgusting too.  However, you, the poor asst prof, are
caught in the middle -- students who don't belong anywhere near a college
and administrators who need to keep enrollment up or they will loose funding. 

The object is to learn the rules of the game and then play by those rules --
stupid though they may be.  Administrators actually think that community
college students (18-20 year olds) make good evaluators of teachers.  And
the students actually think they deserve A's and B's -- and they *get* them
from the other teachers -- so it must be YOUR fault if you don't give them
-- after all they got through HS didn't they --  

OR quit.  (:-)

I disavow any knowledge of the above.

Best wishes,

Little me here in the corner. (:-)



At 04:03 PM 11/15/96 EST, you wrote:
> I am the only full-time person teaching physics in an engineering technology
> division of a community & technical college (part of the University of Akron).
> I was talking to my division chair today about my evaluation of teaching number
> s -- he thought I should work on minimizing my evaluation "range" which is usua
> lly something like "low to high" or "medium to high".  I believe I'm at a disad
> vantage to the rest of the department because mine is the only 100% service cou
> rse offered.....my students have to take physics because its required, not beca
> use it's part of a field that they are directly interested in (at least that's
> the way the kids usually see it).  Students who do well to reasonably well in
> the class tend to rate me fairly high.....the ones who don't do well (usually n
> ot even coming for help after I request it) rate me low.
>
> This brings me to my question:  What do those of you teaching first year physic
> s to non-majors (or mostly non-majors) tend to get on your teacher evaluations?
> Do you see a big range/ high standard deviation?
>
> As an aside, I have done things to bring up my "scores" in the past but I'm not
> sure how reasonable it is to expect all high or even medium to high ratings.
> For instance, I do:  cooperative learning, conceptual demonstrations/questions,
> totally changed our mechanics labs to Realtime Physics computer based, help ses
> sions, etc.
>
> Thanks in advance for any input!
>                                Sue Ramlo
>                                Asst. Prof of General Technology & Coord of GT
>                                Community & Technical College, U of Akron