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Re: Teacher evaluations for 1st year physics



Sue Ramlo says:

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).

The really sad thing about this is that your division chair is actually
serious about it.

What possible correlation could there *really* be between narrowing one's
evaluation "range" or s.d. and what students actually learn by *any*
reasonable measure?

In my experience anyone who teaches this course and is any different or
presses the students much for performance generaly takes a beating in the
student popularity polls. Given a system which uses this as the primary
evaluation of teaching (student complaints are second, and usually any
actual measure of their performance is a distant third if even allowed),
you have your work cut out for you. You can make it through this and still
push the students for superior performance, but you have to gauge your
actions in order to pass the hurdles of tenure and promotion.

Dewey

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Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)385-3105
Professor of Physics Dept: (208)385-3775
Department of Physics/SN318 Fax: (208)385-4330
Boise State University dykstrad@varney.idbsu.edu
1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders
Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper

"Physical concepts are the free creations of the human mind and
are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external
world."--A. Einstein in The Evolution of Physics with L. Infeld,
1938

"Don't mistake your watermelon for the universe." --K. Amdahl in
There Are No Electrons, 1991.
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