Comments on: A note on evaluations

By: germania home insurance

germania home insurance — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 10:46:34 +0000

germania home insurance…

bricklaying reselling Fanny …

By: Hugo Schwyzer

Hugo Schwyzer — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 16:21:58 +0000

As I said in the post, the administration only takes them seriously in the case of tenure-track faculty. Those with tenure are never punished for bad evals or rewarded for good ones. I’ve never heard of a tenured faculty member here being disciplined for poor evaluations. I assume my colleagues take them as seriously as I do, however, and read all the criticisms and compliments.

By: Sertorius

Sertorius — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 19:46:49 +0000

I teach on occassion. Evaluations are nice, but I’d think there could be better ways to figure out if an instructor is working. Do these things have any impact with the U administration?

By: ks

ks — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 12:32:47 +0000

I teach part time at the local U (physics and astronomy, 2-3 evenings a week) and I get evaluated every semester. I’ve definitely noticed a change in the tone of my evaluations over the last several years. The overall opinions don’t seem to change–most of my students like me and seem to think I’m a good teacher and there is definitely some constructive criticism, mostly aimed at how the class is structured more than at my particular teaching style, that I try to incorporate in the next year’s classes if I think it’s a good idea. But the few bad evaluations have definitely gotten more personal and vicious in the last year or two.

I just got mine back from summer and one student in particular really did not enjoy the class. But the main complaint was that he was pissed that he was taking physics over the summer, that I actually assigned homework and treated the class like I do the regular semester sections of it, and he took it as a personal affront on my part.

By: Hugo Schwyzer

Hugo Schwyzer — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 22:42:02 +0000

Dan, I haven’t seen this year’s, and won’t until next Spring.

But between my first evaluations in 1993 and the last batch (Fall 2004), there were few changes. (Other than the fact that I got far fewer flirtatious compliments about my appearance in ‘04 than I did in my rookie years). The overall ratings were the same, the weight of criticism to compliment unchanged. I’ll let you know when I get the ones given out this week back — which won’t be for a while…

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 20:00:04 +0000

I’m curious - have you noticed a change in evaluations over the years? Have the nasty notes become nastier, or the worshipful posts more worshipful? It seems in this day and age of myspace and blogging, everybody is becoming an expert in their own opinion. My experience is that that has translated into a growth in negative criticism - people feel the need to tell everybody why they don’t like anything, and much of it is purely visceral. The polarization of opinions on politics and religion and cultural norms only adds to the fire. Almost like people are less open to hearing something that challenges them, and then, when they are challenged, they erupt and attack rather than listen and evaluate. So how do today’s evaluations compare with those from ten years ago?