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Re: Student Evaluations



Whew! Little did I realize that the commentary on student evaluations of
teaching would produce such a spirited response.

The commentary was stimulated by Mike Birnbaum's article about his research
in our Academic Senate magazine. Included in that issue were three
responses from other faculty members. One was from Gayle Vogt who teaches
business writing, another was from Mary Kay Crouch who teaches English
(mainly to prospective K-12 teachers), and one was from D.V. Ramsamooj who
teaches Civil Engineering.

Gayle noted that many of the written comments on student evals that work
their way into retention, tenure and promotion documents could be considered
libelous. Mary Kay noted that many of her students criticize her for not
giving them enough "warm fuzzies", to which she responds that she mothers
her daughter but she teaches her students. Dr. Ramsamooj noted that in some
of their multiple section intro courses they give a common final exam to all
sections. What they have found is that the students who do the best on the
common final give their instructors only "average" ratings, while the
students from the section that did the worst on the common final gave their
teacher very high ratings. This suggests that common final exams, where
practical, may help to put student evals in perspective.

Mark Shapiro
http://www.IrascibleProfessor.com