Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by WalterSear » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 2:20 AM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #55

cortesoft wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regarding professors wanting to keep review data tightly sealed: in my view, if you can't by public disclosure of your evaluation, then you either don't feel you're meeting expectations, or have no desire to improve in areas where students feel improvement could be made. There is also the third option, which the author is arguing for: that the professors do not think the ratings are an accurate reflection of their…

I'm sure many professors would agree. Perhaps the engineering statistics professor I met who bragged that no one ever got an A on his final, because teaching wasa competition between him and the students. And the government professor I had who was inordinately proud of the fact that his course was required because three soldiers from Texas stayed in China after the Korean war and spent the rest of the first class goi…

I bet the adjunct whose english was so bad that she would just answer a question kind of close to what you asked, as quickly as possible and try and move on would too.

She also answered any questions asked in Mandarin, in Mandarin. When asked to translate an exchange for the rest of the class, she blushed and said 'it was complicated'. At the end of the semester, the class was so far behind, 1/3 of the materials for the course exam were delivered during an optional study session.

And so would the electrophysiology professor who spent over an hour of a grad seminar explaining how to use a floppy disk. Because he had trouble with computers.

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

#62

Post by eagsalazar2 » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 2:31 AM UTC

olliej wrote: post #9

gonehome wrote: post #3

I'm pretty skeptical of the claims in this - it'd be interesting to see actual data. Evaluations are one of the extremely few levers students actually have to pull when dealing with a terrible teacher. I'd expect that given an entire class' worth of evaluations you'd be able to strip outliers and get some genuine useful responses. Though the worst professor I had at RPI held our grades hostage until the evaluations w…

In America teachers get tenure so your feedback has no impact on them improving. Also if you look at literally any study of them TAs for harder courses get harsher ratings, they get harsher ratings from weaker students. I also spent a number of years as a TA I can say anecdotally that is my exact first hand experience - good reviews in easy courses like graphics, atrocious scores in design of concurrent systems. In f…

It would be easy enough to normalize for those trends right? (seems like a solvable problem)

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

#63

Post by eagsalazar2 » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 2:33 AM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #46

katsura wrote: post #33

To be honest, I'm not sure how teachers get and keep their jobs, but as students are graded on their studying skills, I feel like teachers should be graded every fews years on their teaching skills. My girlfriend is studying in a distance university, so she basically never meets any of her teachers. This year she has to do practices at a chosen company, and she got a teacher assigned to her who is supposed to "help"…

To be honest, I'm not sure how teachers get and keep their jobs, but as students are graded on their studying skills, I feel like teachers should be graded every fews years on their teaching skills. Well, to be honest, I really wish everyone who wants to one more hurdle in front of teachers should understand the correlation between bad teaching and teachers having a low-paid, unrewarding and effectively abusive job.…

There is something to what you are saying but it is also true that many many aspiring teachers wash out because they can't even get their first job after getting their teaching degree. It _is_ a competitive market in many places but the market _isn't_ functioning as it should because of dysfunctional relationships with unions and tenure.

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

#64

Post by stale2002 » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 2:34 AM UTC

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.

I mean, it is their money. So they are certainly entitled to something.

That something that they should be entitled to is a good education.

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

#65

Post by jseliger » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 2:34 AM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #3

I'm pretty skeptical of the claims in this - it'd be interesting to see actual data. Evaluations are one of the extremely few levers students actually have to pull when dealing with a terrible teacher. I'd expect that given an entire class' worth of evaluations you'd be able to strip outliers and get some genuine useful responses. Though the worst professor I had at RPI held our grades hostage until the evaluations w…

Evaluations are one of the extremely few levers students actually have to pull when dealing with a terrible teacher. I'd expect that given an entire class' worth of evaluations you'd be able to strip outliers and get some genuine useful responses.

Schools by and large reward research, not teaching (https://jakeseliger.com/2010/09/26/how-universities-work-or-...), and, even if they do reward teaching, it's not clear that students on evals do more than reward grades.

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

#66

Post by eagsalazar2 » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 2:38 AM UTC

IggleSniggle wrote: post #42

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…

I used to teach in academia. Student reviews are REALLY easy to game. Give everyone As for doing nothing, and most will give you As for just being entertaining. It doesn’t matter if they learn anything, or worse, if they learn the wrong things.

It is 2018, these patterns are _easy_ to detect. Honestly at a fundamental level bailing on optimizing teach performance and student outcomes through feedback loops seems nuts to me. This is how all high functioning dynamic systems work (ok maybe not all).

You just can't throw out the baby with the bathwater here just because there are things to figure out. Most of the reasons people have cited here seem like lame excuses, all easily addressable if you could get sane people to get aligned behind a well designed system. Unfortunately not everyone involved in these conversations is acting sane (or objectively in the best interests of the community) and therefore getting everyone aligned in practically impossible.

This whole conversation, BTW, reminds me a the similar debate around public access to doctor and surgeon outcome data where some doctors are amazing and others have horrendously bad success rates for specific surgeries but if you go to that doctor for that surgery you almost never are given access to that history. A large portion of the medical community is very hostile to the idea of things being otherwise which, IMO, is indefensible from a public health POV and only makes sense if you are a crappy, unscrupulous doctor seeking to avoid accountability.

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

#67

Post by stale2002 » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 2:38 AM UTC

devonkim wrote: post #59

ccleve wrote: post #14

If the school would force teachers to grade on a curve, the problem would go away. Teachers would have only a limited budget of high grades to give away. Grading on a curve is not without problems, particularly when class sizes are small, but it has a lot of benefits. It makes it easier to compare students across schools when the schools use the same curve.

You’re saying something like Cravath would improve the situation and be fairer assessments than grading on absolute scores. I was in a class where a curve was non-existent - 30% of the class got above 90%, 45% got below 60%. What would be “fair” then? Perhaps methods to decouple evaluation scores from student grades should be better explored without antagonizing anyone? Perhaps scores after the first week should be c…

The answer to your question is that the class in question is a bad class, and needs to be fixed.

If 45% of students are failing, then either the class needs to be changed, or more effort needs to be made to prevent students from taking a class that they are likely to fail.

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

#68

Post by repsilat » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 2:43 AM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #47

Y7ZCQtNo39 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some aspects yes, in others no. I accidentally cut myself a little too deep while doing dishes a couple years ago (opaque, soapy water and sharp surfaces don't mix well). I couldn't get the bleeding to stop (without constant pressure held for about an hour), so I went to urgent care. I knew that I needed stitches or that "glue" they use to seal wounds. I didn't care which solution the Doctor picked, but I knew I n…

Sadly, the only thing many students feel they need from a university education is a degree. This is not surprising, given our society's constant refrain of telling everyone, "You need a college degree to get a good job". Many students are there not because they want to learn but because they want to get that piece of paper that is the ticket to a successful career. A teacher forcing them to learn, to spend time and e…

Studies show that the pay differential for "all but completed degree" and "completed degree" are stark. Researchers have said that this indicates that a large fraction of the "value" of college is just signalling (intelligence, aptitude, diligence), not education.

If that's the case, many of the students in your post are right -- just giving them the degree could save them (and the school) a lot of time and money. Maybe your art history class is a cost-effective way to get a world class education in late Italian Romantic oil paintings, but as a way of proving you're smart enough to work in a law firm (or even "broaden your horizons and become a better citizen through rounded education") I can't imagine it's terribly efficient.

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

#69

Post by tgb » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 2:45 AM UTC

olliej wrote: post #9

gonehome wrote: post #3

I'm pretty skeptical of the claims in this - it'd be interesting to see actual data. Evaluations are one of the extremely few levers students actually have to pull when dealing with a terrible teacher. I'd expect that given an entire class' worth of evaluations you'd be able to strip outliers and get some genuine useful responses. Though the worst professor I had at RPI held our grades hostage until the evaluations w…

In America teachers get tenure so your feedback has no impact on them improving. Also if you look at literally any study of them TAs for harder courses get harsher ratings, they get harsher ratings from weaker students. I also spent a number of years as a TA I can say anecdotally that is my exact first hand experience - good reviews in easy courses like graphics, atrocious scores in design of concurrent systems. In f…

Not my experience - being a TA for a bad professor or bad course involved more work but gets one better evaluations. You're the "good guy". If the professor is good, the standards are higher and you can't leave their shadow.

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

#70

Post by eastWestMath » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 3:06 AM UTC

olliej wrote: post #9

gonehome wrote: post #3

I'm pretty skeptical of the claims in this - it'd be interesting to see actual data. Evaluations are one of the extremely few levers students actually have to pull when dealing with a terrible teacher. I'd expect that given an entire class' worth of evaluations you'd be able to strip outliers and get some genuine useful responses. Though the worst professor I had at RPI held our grades hostage until the evaluations w…

In America teachers get tenure so your feedback has no impact on them improving. Also if you look at literally any study of them TAs for harder courses get harsher ratings, they get harsher ratings from weaker students. I also spent a number of years as a TA I can say anecdotally that is my exact first hand experience - good reviews in easy courses like graphics, atrocious scores in design of concurrent systems. In f…

It can be even worse - I’ve seen TAs who basically serve up assignment solutions trying to get high ratings.