Timeline for How seriously do professors take teaching evaluations?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
6 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 20, 2012 at 14:54 | comment | added | Paul Siegel | For one of my recent courses I created a gmail account and gave them all the password so that they could anonymously e-mail me feedback throughout the semester. It was actually quite helpful - they told me when they were confused, when I didn't give enough examples, etc. | |
| Apr 7, 2011 at 9:13 | comment | added | Jitse Niesen | I have a forum on the website for one of the courses I teach at Leeds University, UK. I told them that the forum is for them to give feedback on the course and that they can do this anonymously, and that's also mentioned on the website. I never got any reaction. | |
| Jun 23, 2010 at 17:54 | comment | added | Frank Thorne | Regarding "it is a pity to see young people who are afraid to teach epsilon−delta in calculus courses because it may irritate the students and result in bad evaluations": I respectfully disagree, and indeed I think this is a good effect of teaching evaluations. There is a tendency among mathematicians to want to be purists and to always do things "right" even if this is confusing, uninteresting, or incomprehensible to the students. I am not saying that epsilon-delta necessarily has no place in intro calculus, but I am suggesting that such student complaints deserve to be taken seriously. | |
| Jan 20, 2010 at 1:04 | comment | added | user1437 | There's always the option of including a web-form on the course website. Most courses that I've seen have "required" website anyway, and making it a simple input form will give the students some anonymity. Having it on the course website will probably encourage students to use it because it's easy to type stuff in a box. You can even include a CAPTCHA if you're worried about spam. | |
| Jan 19, 2010 at 12:21 | comment | added | JSE | Fedja: You are absolutely right that end-of-course evaluations may or may not be useful for assessing our teaching but they are certainly NOT useful for students who would like to request an adjustment in the course. What I often do is hand out an informal evaluation sheet midway through the course; that way, if I'm doing something that's annoying the students and that I want to change, I can find out in time to do something about it! We teach at the same place so I can say with confidence that the students here tend to like this plan. | |
| Jan 19, 2010 at 6:29 | history | answered | fedja | CC BY-SA 2.5 |