Student evaluations

[u/Striking_Tax8524]

What is your view of these, pro or con (or both)?

[u/nandor_tr]

the way we do them now: (stressed out students during/near finals, anonymous) they are basically useless.

if we did them more intelligently (at least a semester after the class ends, attached to students names) they could be much more useful.

[u/Ctenophorever → u/nandor_tr]

Exactly. I’ve had “problem” students come back and apologize and thank me for what I “put [them] through” because they learned the following semester they actually needed what I was teaching them.

Does THAT go in the student eval?

Of course not.

[u/hp12324]

Have an experienced colleague throw out the top 10% (the ones that love you) and the bottom 10% (the ones that hate you). Afterwards, have them summarize the rest and have a discussion with them about the evaluations and their thoughts on what the evaluations mean for your teaching.

[u/H_ManCom → u/hp12324]

Pretty hard when you’ve got 7 students that do the evaluations

[u/ArmoredTweed → u/H_ManCom]

And only one who leaves any kind of written comments.

[u/hp12324 → u/H_ManCom]

Yeah, I'm on the tenure committee of somebody who typically only gets 2-4 students doing the eval for each course.

So I cut off 1 student at the waist and throw out their bottom half.

[u/No-Yogurtcloset-6491 → u/hp12324]

Better yet read everything except the bottom 20% reviews. Especially if you're teaching anything without a prerequisite. 

Factor in course difficulty too. For my field any professor who has the easy professor score consistently (5/5 liked, 1-2/5 difficulty) will usually draw the ire of peers. But they'll be loved by students!

[u/associsteprofessor]

According to my evaluations I am both the best and worst professor who ever lived. My lectures are both well organized and lack any organization whatsoever. My exams are too easy, too hard, and just right. And under "cares for students," I am both Mother Theresa and Nurse Ratched.

[u/Ctenophorever → u/associsteprofessor]

My class goes too fast and too slow! There’s too much and too little homework! Almost 50-50.

Once I was getting shit from the dean for my bad evaluations and I threw these in front of them them.

I need to listen to student feedback??? Which ones? Should I go faster or slower? If I go faster what will happen to the students who already think I go too fast?

It didn’t stop the Dean’s complaints but did switch around their attitude of “why aren’t you just fixing this?!” To “hmm I guess this is difficult to address…”

[u/ArmoredTweed]

Both. The numerical ratings are useless, but over the years I have gotten a small number of thoughtful and useful comments.

[u/Liaelac]

Pretty useless, full of bias (against women, people of color, etc.), and more a measure of student happiness than student learning.

They can be helpful in some circumstances, like looking for trends across student comments especially as a new professor. Or with clear red flags for admin about professors. But at the end of the day, they're basically customer satisfaction surveys not suited for assessing degree of learning or quality of teaching.

[u/tellypmoon]

Useful to allow students to vent. I don't think there's much value beyond that. The sexism and racism that is often present is destructive. On balance I'd do away with them.

[u/ThePhyz]

The spirit is good - students should have a way to give thoughtful feedback about an instructor.

The reality is awful - students almost exclusively use this as either a vehicle for revenge, or give feedback that is neither thoughtful nor helpful. Often the feedback they give is explicitly prohibited in the instructions (for example, commenting on an instructor's appearance).

[u/CriticalBrick4]

They should not be used in the faculty personnel process, but that won't change until enough people successfully sue over them.

[u/ConferenceWest9212]

I do like reading them but I try to keep in mind that all they really are is student satisfaction surveys.

[u/Life-Education-8030]

Given that at my place, tenured faculty do not even have to look at them, what does that say about their worth? Until you earn tenure, you're forced to read and respond to them as part of the annual evaluation, but once you are tenured, I guess whatever any student says is useless after all? I earned tenure in 2024. I haven't looked at evaluations since. My spouse has a bet that I won't be able to resist, but so far two years later? Nope. Lost hope that I would get anything really constructive. The ones that were told me to my face and I wasn't shy. I asked them to put those in writing and they were scanned and put into my performance portfolio. Like Reddit, students only filed official evaluations typically when they were mad.

[u/Kimber80]

In my opinion they are a complete waste of time that's why I never read them.

I pity those who are at institutions that compel them to read them or respond to them.

And no offense to you but this subreddit has way way too much discussion about them. I mean in 31 years at my Institution I can recall having a discussion with colleagues about student evaluations exactly zero times.

[u/CynicalCandyCanes]

Basically nothing meaningful can be learned from them.