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Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

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Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#21

Post by thrower123 »

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #7
rb808 wrote: post #5

My best advice I got about college teaching: University is a place of higher learning, not higher teaching. If you're relying on being spoon fed the course, you're doing it wrong.

What exactly are universities selling in that case? From an individual standpoint, sure, a student is always well-advised to take charge of their own learning process. But if you can do that, what do you need a university for? At this point I'm pretty sure the answer boils down to "a piece of paper and a dating pool."

Pieces of paper that open the gateways to a comfortable white-collar middle class life. At least putatively.

The more expensive ones sell connections that can open the doors to wealth and power.

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#22

Post by azhenley »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #20
azhenley wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a horrible idea. Then students will try to take courses with weak students. Oh, that smart group is taking CS340 next semester? Guess I'll wait until the following semester. Do not turn it into even more of a competition than it already is. Why should someone else's ability influence my grade???

Because the meaning of your grade is that it gets compared to their grade.

Says who? Why can't it be used to evaluate my individual learning/effort?

Grades only make sense to compare within the same class at the same university during the same semester.

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#23

Post by dragonwriter »

edw wrote: post #19
Y7ZCQtNo39 wrote: post #6

We pushed very hard at my alma mater to publicize course/teacher evaluations. We eventually got the University to accept iff a minimum participation rate was met (on a per course basis-- so it wasn't all or nothing. We'd get a subset of the data when enough participation occurred. We considered this reasonable, since if very few students participate, the data isn't all that meaningful). Regarding professors wanting t…

American colleges more resemble four-year all-inclusive resorts than they do rigorous institutions of higher learning. Serving someone well doesn’t necessarily mean making them happy. Students — people who by enrolling at an institution in a course of study admit their ignorance of that domain — do not seem to me good judges of an instructor qua instructor.

> American colleges more resemble four-year all-inclusive resorts than they do rigorous institutions of higher learning.

I've been to both American colleges and all-inclusive resorts and, no, they don't.

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#24

Post by waterpigcow »

It is my suspicion that the attitude of american students towards their professors is perhaps a function of the privatization of schools. since students are paying for their education they feel entitled to a good grade regardless of performance. I would like to know others thoughts on this. I don't know much about post secondary education in Europe but it seems different from the American collegiate system somehow.

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#25

Post by whatshisface »

edw wrote: post #19
Y7ZCQtNo39 wrote: post #6

We pushed very hard at my alma mater to publicize course/teacher evaluations. We eventually got the University to accept iff a minimum participation rate was met (on a per course basis-- so it wasn't all or nothing. We'd get a subset of the data when enough participation occurred. We considered this reasonable, since if very few students participate, the data isn't all that meaningful). Regarding professors wanting t…

American colleges more resemble four-year all-inclusive resorts than they do rigorous institutions of higher learning. Serving someone well doesn’t necessarily mean making them happy. Students — people who by enrolling at an institution in a course of study admit their ignorance of that domain — do not seem to me good judges of an instructor qua instructor.

There is a universal baseline expectation that everything the instructor says will be correct, so the student's lack of knowledge isn't holding them back. What they have to evaluate is how good the professor was at teaching, and they are the foremost experts on that subject.

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#26

Post by sdinsn »

waterpigcow wrote: post #24

It is my suspicion that the attitude of american students towards their professors is perhaps a function of the privatization of schools. since students are paying for their education they feel entitled to a good grade regardless of performance. I would like to know others thoughts on this. I don't know much about post secondary education in Europe but it seems different from the American collegiate system somehow.

> privatization of schools

Hmm? There has always been private schools. Nothing is new about them

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#27

Post by Y7ZCQtNo39 »

edw wrote: post #19
Y7ZCQtNo39 wrote: post #6

We pushed very hard at my alma mater to publicize course/teacher evaluations. We eventually got the University to accept iff a minimum participation rate was met (on a per course basis-- so it wasn't all or nothing. We'd get a subset of the data when enough participation occurred. We considered this reasonable, since if very few students participate, the data isn't all that meaningful). Regarding professors wanting t…

American colleges more resemble four-year all-inclusive resorts than they do rigorous institutions of higher learning. Serving someone well doesn’t necessarily mean making them happy. Students — people who by enrolling at an institution in a course of study admit their ignorance of that domain — do not seem to me good judges of an instructor qua instructor.

Students aren't reviewing the quality of their campus on-site gym when they review their professor.

There's genuine concerns that should be reasonably heard. One example is slowness in grading homework/exams/etc. What happens is professors get backlogged, and you have multiple homework/exams and the student missed on understanding some concept they were later graded on. If the student had regular grade updates, they would know where they needed to focus more on the course material to master it. Instead, those misunderstandings snowball and you end up doing worse on a final exam since you didn't know what course concepts you correctly understood and missed.

I agree broadly with the wholistic assessment of what American colleges have become. But the review process is still germane-- classes are the core offering of college.

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#28

Post by edw »

dragonwriter wrote: post #23
edw wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American colleges more resemble four-year all-inclusive resorts than they do rigorous institutions of higher learning. Serving someone well doesn’t necessarily mean making them happy. Students — people who by enrolling at an institution in a course of study admit their ignorance of that domain — do not seem to me good judges of an instructor qua instructor.

> American colleges more resemble four-year all-inclusive resorts than they do rigorous institutions of higher learning. I've been to both American colleges and all-inclusive resorts and, no, they don't.

I’ll take your word for it, but the ads for Sandals resort I saw on tv twenty years ago sure seem a lot like what I observe walking through NYU’s campus every day.

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#29

Post by shanghaiaway »

Y7ZCQtNo39 wrote: post #6

We pushed very hard at my alma mater to publicize course/teacher evaluations. We eventually got the University to accept iff a minimum participation rate was met (on a per course basis-- so it wasn't all or nothing. We'd get a subset of the data when enough participation occurred. We considered this reasonable, since if very few students participate, the data isn't all that meaningful). Regarding professors wanting t…

Like with healthcare recipients, students don't necessarily know what they need and therefore aren't able to accurately rate providers.

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#30

Post by lliamander »

waterpigcow wrote: post #24

It is my suspicion that the attitude of american students towards their professors is perhaps a function of the privatization of schools. since students are paying for their education they feel entitled to a good grade regardless of performance. I would like to know others thoughts on this. I don't know much about post secondary education in Europe but it seems different from the American collegiate system somehow.

Anecdotally, I've seen people who only started taking school seriously (studying, not goofing off, etc) once they actually had to pay for it.

Certainly feeling entitled to a good grade is a possible consequence of having to pay for it yourself, and there will always be those who react that way, but I think it is a socialized response that depends on other factors.

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