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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

#131

Post by jrnvs »

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.

But why do you let the students grade the course after they've already gotten a grade? That's insane. In my university, you'd get a paper for the teacher and course review after handing in the final exam. This means you can comment on the quality of the exam, but you don't know your grade yet.

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

#132

Post by jhasse »

Fomite wrote: post #119
tamaharbor wrote: post #87

I had taught two semesters of a basic pharmacy course at a local community college. Of the 20 or so student reviews I received, 80% of them mentioned my 'ta-tas'. Enough said.

I've read the evaluations of a few of my female colleagues. Without fail, a good portion of them are toe-curlingly sexist.

Care to give an example? Are you male or female?

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

#134

Post by DanielBMarkham »

This is the age-old doctor question. You go to the doctor's office because you have a medical problem.

Doctor 1 comes in on-time, she's smart, capable, friendly, and spends a good amount of time concerned about you and your situation.

Doctor 2 comes in late, she's irascible, pedantic, hurried, and only listens long enough to tell you what to do. She also insults you and your family in various ways and doesn't seem to care.

After the visit, you go to Yelp. Which one was the better doctor?

You have no idea! But do you think that's going to stop somebody from forming and posting an opinion anyway?

You can make the argument that these other qualities are good to have in a doctor. I agree. I want a doctor like the first one. But people go to doctors first and foremost to get better, not to make new social acquaintances. If the first doc is incompetent and hurting people, and the second doc a genius, and her attitude is actually causing more people to comply with what's best for them out of a sense anger at her style, perhaps? That's the thing. Who the hell cares if the outside looks cool/sexy/friendly or not?

So when we ask for reviews from students who have never worked in the field they're studying for, they're like that Yelp doctor reviewer. I don't see how this situation is good for anybody. In fact, it'll probably lead to a bunch friendly, good-looking morons with great people skills entertaining bunch of kids who aren't learning anything. That's the only natural consequence here.

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

#135

Post by Fomite »

jhasse wrote: post #132
Fomite wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read the evaluations of a few of my female colleagues. Without fail, a good portion of them are toe-curlingly sexist.

Care to give an example? Are you male or female?

I'm male.

Lots of students under the impression that commenting on their dress is appropriate. A large chunk of those being suggesting they dress in ways more visually interesting. Some direct references to their appearance (usually "positive").

One particularly egregious one speculating on who she slept with to have her position.

Tons of gendered expectations in language. Expectations to "be more nurturing" and things like that. Far more comments about them being "young", "inexperienced" and "new" than my own evaluations, despite being considerably more experienced than I am (and no, there was no way my class was just more polished - it was thrown together last minute).

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

#136

Post by bufferoverflow »

avani wrote: post #88

Student reviews are also ridiculously sexist in the average case. In a recent study, the students rated identical teachers differently enough by gender that actual teaching performance was lost in the noise: https://academic.oup.com/jeea/advance-article-abstract/doi/1... Another pair of studies showed that identical courses where students thought instructors were male rated higher than those that had a female profess…

What the hell are "identical teachers"? The premise alone doesn't make sense.

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

#137

Post by kiriakasis »

enriquto wrote: post #125

As a teacher, I disagree strongly with the conclusions of this article. Anonymous student evaluations are an invaluable tool to improve my teaching. The students say so many fair and useful things!

I think the problem is when student evaluation have an affect (positive or negative) on the teacher career.

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

#138

Post by sshine »

wisty wrote: post #118

There's a much better way to hold educators to account - have other educators sit in on classes. But this is often very strongly resisted, apparently it's 'unprofessional'.

As a TA I often attended lectures just to be able to refer to what students were just told. Often this information had not been processed or remembered very well by students.

I always thought that lecturers, if there were multiple for a single course, would not attend one another's lectures under the pretense that they were busy, but with the actual reason that they didn't want to hold one another accountable for inefficient teaching methods.

"I don't care what you do, you won't care what I do, the typos from last year's slides repeat."

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

#139

Post by kkarakk »

tamaharbor wrote: post #87

I had taught two semesters of a basic pharmacy course at a local community college. Of the 20 or so student reviews I received, 80% of them mentioned my 'ta-tas'. Enough said.

Are we now pretending that having an attractive teacher doesn't affect attention spans? the more attractive the teacher the more time i spent daydreaming as a kid for "obvious" reasons

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

#140

Post by kiriakasis »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #130
wisty wrote: post #118

There's a much better way to hold educators to account - have other educators sit in on classes. But this is often very strongly resisted, apparently it's 'unprofessional'.

I'd be curious to hear who thinks this is unprofessional. Not any educators I know.

well, forcing another teacher in the class with the intent of supervision of the teacher is obviously a terrible idea. Having two teacher in every class collaborating during the lecture or as an aide to supervise the students can be a obviously good idea.

Generally speaking, in my opinion, teaching is a very complex and personal interaction and micromanaging only makes it worse.

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