Do I wonder what they say? Yeah.
Am I nervous about what they say? Yeah.
But thats a good thing, right? 'Cause if I didn't care at all about being a good professor or teacher, then I wouldn't care what the evaluations said, right? Right?
I don't expect to get perfect scores, since really I am a new fledgling teacher just learning to spread her wings and fly. There is a lot of room for improvement and the rationale side of me knows that. But the other side of me just wants everyone to like me and think that I'm doing a good job.
Unrealistic, eh?
Especially the everyone like me bit. Outside of the classroom everyone doesn't like me, so why would all my students like me? Especially those that are currently failing.
Apparently the assistant dean reads through the evaluations and will talk to me about them at my end of year review. Will there be anything useful to help me become a better instructor in those evaluations? My gut says no.
So has anyone ever benefited from student evaluations?
Also, and this is kinda related.... has anyone ever looked themselves up on Rate My Professor? 'Cause I have. And I think I'm going to wait awhile before doing it again.
I think sometimes the evaluations have been helpful, in that it gives me a sense of how I'm conveying the material. You will never please everyone and sometimes even when you go out of your way to be helpful, some students may not view it that way. For instance, I got comments about how I explained material but didn't give enough concrete examples so it was hard to piece everything together. The next semester I tried really hard to incorporate more concrete, practical examples of how this information fits together or applies to something in the real world. (ie., why it might be important outside of this class, this test, this one fact kind of way) Then I got some students who appreciated the examples and realized it was helping them understand the concepts. And some who wrote, goes off on tangents giving too many examples of information that does not directly relate to the test material. So I knew I was doing a better job of explaining but some kids just want "what is on the test please" so I can memorize it and move on. So overall I think they can sometimes be helpful but you will probably get a mix of responses related to the range of grades and how the individual learn or prefer to learn. sorry that was so long!
ReplyDeleteSometimes comments have been really helpful for me in terms of structuring the course, knowing how much reading to assign, how I present the assignments, etc. I use a lot more demonstrations and videos now due to course evals.
ReplyDeleteI don't ever look at RMP.com - too painful.
My suggestion, when you get your course evals wait. Don't open them right away. Do it when you are alone, mentally prepared, have time to process them and have a large glass of wine handy. The worst thing is opening them as soon as you get them, right before you have to go to a meeting or something - all you'll focus on will be the horrible ones. (And there are always horrible ones in my experience, but they're usually vague and invalid)
Hell, yeah, I've looked myself up on rmp! All we all really want is a hot pepper, right?
ReplyDeleteMy evals from last semester were insanely helpful (with lots of nice ego-boosting in there, too). Lots of paragraph-length, thoughtful responses that went far beyond "she is HARD" or "best prof ever!" I know that my students took them seriously in part because I made sure to mention a few days in advance that I'd be handing them out and also explained how seriously the school (but especially myself) take them.
That said, you have to take comments with a grain of salt. One comment from a few years ago said that I could improve the course by teaching topless more often. Oh, my.
I pretend RMP.com doesn't exist. All friends and family are banned from telling me whether I even have an entry.
ReplyDeleteAlcohol goes well with reading evals.