Professor evaluations are a standard part of the end of semester experience for students, however, for some professors, the evaluation process is much more important than a simple online form.
The time of year when the hot button topic is stress and phrases like “I’m exhausted” and “curse week” fill the air like tired little snowflakes has come once again. One small contribution to the yearly bout exhaustion that occurs around week 14 of any semester is the litany of professor evaluation forms sent out by the university to students.
These evaluations are defined in broad terms with the university email every enrolled student receives saying, “Every year, as a matter of University policy, faculty members are evaluated for general merit. The feedback they receive from course evaluations directly affects reappointment, promotion, tenure, and salary as well as to assess the merits of their teaching.”
However, evaluations have not always been administered through email and filled out in an online format.
Dr. Kent Drummond is a faculty member of the Department of English, and in his 32 years of teaching at UW, remembers a different time, when evaluations were administered in-person.
“Up until the recent past, students completed the evaluations in class and instructors would leave the room,” Drummond said, recalling the past practices of professor evaluation. “Response rate was much higher, but there was concern about influence from professors.”
“These evaluations are extremely important,” Drummond said. “The administration has had to somewhat discount their impact in light of this newer method, and that’s a shame.
Drummond argued that the evaluations hold a great deal of importance, but the online format of the evaluations has cemented the importance of student feedback.
“We make up with that for our peer evaluations of course, but the overall effectiveness of student evaluations has not decreased,” Drummond argued. “It has become harder to take student evaluation less seriously in light of this newer method.”
Dr. Drummond also pointed out some of the difficulties which were present with the previous system. Including situations where colleagues within departments would go to each other’s classes to administer evaluations while the instructor remained as uninvolved in the process as possible.
One of the biggest problems, according to Drummond, was the process the professors had to go through at the end of the process.
“There was an obligation by staff to type them all up, which created a lot of stress at the end of the semester. That was the rationale behind switching to online,” Drummond said. “Response rates are much lower, and overall quality is lower. Students aren’t focused on that class at that moment, and it affects the responses.”
Kate Northrop, another professor for the Creative Writing Program, said she appreciates the existence of evaluations, no matter how they’re administered.
“I try to learn from them,” Northrop said. “I like the idea of giving students a voice and making that voice safe, so it seems wise to make them anonymous.”
Northrop provided one example of exactly how and why the evaluations are worthwhile for professors to receive.
“Last semester, when we were all on Zoom, I talked even quicker than I normally do, and one student pointed out that I might allow more time for students processing information and reflecting,” Northtrop said in regard to feedback she had received.
Dr. Drummond also believes in the importance of these evaluations, but also that they could be done differently, to much more effective results.
“If we could find a way to have the students come into the class, with a colleague, and fill it out in the same way they do it now, to me that would solve the problem,” Drummond said. “You can claim bias with either way of doing it, but I feel the bias of the in-person is less.”
Dr. Matt Henry is a professor for the Honors College. While he says he has never had the opportunity to experience in-person evaluations, he sees their largest issue as one of standardization.
“I think there should be universally agreed upon best practices for the way questions are phrased,” Henry said. “Every department has a different way of evaluating effectiveness in the classroom and I don’t think that always allows for the results to be fair to the people being evaluated.”
“The way it used to be done, students were in that class at the regular class time thinking about what had happened throughout the semester,” Drummond explained. “If a student is sitting in Coal Creek Coffee instead, what happens is what we call a bimodal reaction. People are drawn to write evaluations because they either love it or hate it. You get the extremes, and less useful information.”
