Every term, professors give their students an opportunity to have a say. Course evaluations are often overlooked as a part of the academic process, as many students view the process as irrelevant.
At the moment, professors can choose to have students fill out course evaluations during either Dead Week or during Finals Week. At a recent University Senate meeting, associate professor of psychology Bertram Malle said that the scheduling of course evaluations during Finals Week is “potentially disastrous.” Malle believes that course evaluations should only be written during Dead Week in order to prevent students from being influenced by “the subjective experience of the final exam, which is not diagnostic of the course’s value or the instructor’s teaching quality.”
Malle makes a good, but ultimately flawed point. Professors constantly manipulate the subjective course-evaluation process. Professors have handed out candy on evaluation day or preceded the day with an easy week of watching videos. When evaluating a course, students should be able to consider all of its contents – especially its final.
As a cumulative assessment of what students have learned throughout a course, the final is especially important to consider when formulating an opinion of the course as a whole. A final incommensurate with the rest of the class is indicative of a problem within the course or in the quality of instruction and should be noted on evaluations. Instructors who structure their classes well should have no problem with allowing students to evaluate them after final exams are administered.
The University should look at reforming the process to ensure that students and faculty get the most out of the evaluation process. Using DuckWeb, the University could institute an online process by which students could have a window – a full week or longer – to fill out evaluations.
Course evaluations should mean something important. Some might fear that an online evaluation process would be less trustworthy than its in-class counterpart, and also that the process would cease being “mandatory.” This fear is unfounded. Evaluations are often issued during the last 10 minutes of class, when distracted students are itching to leave the classroom. Even students who want to write something substantive sometimes cannot come up with anything during the allotted time, and many simply leave shortly after the professor has left without filling out an evaluation at all.
If students had more time to craft an intelligent response to their classes, professors and departments would receive feedback or higher quality. Professors would still have to contend with the bitter responses of angry students who feel as if their anonymity gives them carte blanche to be as vulgar as possible, but this is an inevitability.
The evaluation process, as it currently exists, does not work in students’ favor. It’s a rushed process, and even when there are no “subjective experiences” negatively coloring a student’s perception of a professor, the process remains imperfect nonetheless. Embracing technology to streamline the process seems like a viable option, and giving students more time to craft their responses to a class or professor would only benefit the University. Professors like Malle worry about their academic careers and reputations, and so do students. If there must be a discussion about course evaluations, let it be a serious discussion that looks toward the future.