Course Evaluations: So Students May Sign on the Dotted Line

Brett Zimmerman of York University has published in the new issue of University Affairs a spirited look at course evaluations.  People who are familiar with this method of helping to determine teaching effectiveness will know that, generally, a questionnaire of some kind is manually distributed to university classes late in a semester and the results, compiled and summarized, are passed along to the instructor.  To protect the identity of students, they are told to complete these evaluations anonymously, and the professor does not get to see the handwritten submissions.  It is common for the results to be released to the professor only after final grades have been processed.

   

There are, of course, many problems with course evaluations.  Though collective agreements and faculty handbooks often limit their use for the purposes of professional advancement, the sheer bulk of them prove irresistible: we receive many of them on a regular basis, and many of them can be quite good.  Is it a surprise that, when arguing achievement, we are tempted to use them – warts and all?  And Dr. Zimmerman here uncovers all the familiar warts.  Evaluations can be completed by students blinded by their most recent negative result; they can be completed by students bearing a grudge from an offhand comment; they can be completed by students simply disenchanted with post-secondary education.  The comments made by these students will, inevitably, have little to do with the most salient points of a professor’s performance.

   

But the essay also touches on a couple of points not enough discussed.  First, these evaluations are often, themselves, written quite poorly.  In institutions teeming with professionals who make a living by gathering information from people through surveys, this fact is shocking.  Why, asks Dr. Zimmerman, do we ask students what they didn’t like about a course rather than asking them if there was something they did not like about it?  Why do we encourage students to criticize us, thus?  Second, and more importantly, why do we allow our students to libel us anonymously?  I am held personally responsible for everything I say and write to a student.  Why do we allow students to write anything they wish about us without teaching them that they have some responsibility for those comments?  I think this is related to a movement away from personal responsibility in our culture, generally, and universities should never be complicit by encouraging bad behavior.

   

I am constantly shocked by how our society accepts recklessness and irresponsibility.  Our local newspaper has a “roasted and toasted” page where citizens can complain: it is like a letters page without signatures.  So, is it surprising that the most read page in our student newspaper for as long as I can remember allows anonymous students (who must be, granted, registered users of the paper’s website) to insult each other?  Various professor rating sites and social networking sites are little more than invitations to libel with impunity.

   

If you have a problem with a course and the way it is taught, you should always talk to the instructor about it while the course is ongoing.  I have never understood why students fear reprisals in such a situation.  How is it that we dignify such suspicions by structuring a whole system to protect people from something we only assume might happen?  If a student with a complaint was ever somehow punished for complaining, mechanisms already exist to investigate and reverse any manner of asymmetrical treatment of individuals in the classroom.  If the problem cannot be resolved, ultimately, if it is the kind of thing that should be reflected in a course evaluation, it is the principled thing to do to sign that evaluation, even though the instructor will not (and should not) see that signature.

   

It is my personal opinion, and only my personal opinion, that we should always require signatures.  If we are going to say things about people, we should have to put our names to those things.  We should send our students out into the world respecting the power of their opinions and better respecting those people on whom those opinions are brought to bear.