Sharing my course eval comments

My supervisors like to discuss evaluations. I rarely look at the number stuff on these evals but I always read the comments to see if I do need to make some changes. Let's face, we all get stuck in a rut sometimes; our moods get influenced by negative "real life" situations, and sometimes it's just damn difficult to maintain patience and niceness (is that even a word?). But overall, these types of behaviors are few and far between and don't last long. And students are really very understanding if you feel comfortable telling them what's going on. Frankly, I don't. However I do mention that things have been rough for a while (without details like surgery on my eye -- not fun and I couldn't see straight for a week and was impatient with having to answer the same questions a bazillion times) and I DO APOLOGIZE to individuals or to the class if my communication is short and/or abrupt. Students actually like knowing their profs are "real people" with real problems.

That said, the following comments were not from that sort of interaction on my part. These were from my normal, empathetic, yet to-the-point expectations in every class.

Fortunately my supervisors provide the means to respond during the faculty evaluation process to course evaluations from students.

First the crappy ones:

Student: This is the worst professor I have ever had. The assignments were awful and she kept changing requirements every week.

ME: This is a canned course written by instructional designers who have never taught anything online. Believe me, I WOULD change it if I could but I'm not allowed to do that.

I hated this professor. She kept marking up my writing and rarely commented on what I was writing about.

ME: Gee honey, this is a writing course. What you write about isn’t important here; it’s HOW you write it. What did you expect from a course titled “basic writing for college students”?

She corrected us most of the time by referring us to posted documents, of which she had so many, they became confusing.

ME: These documents are called RESOURCES. They were organized for easy navigation by topic and there was also a search feature so you could quickly get the resource you needed.

It was an expensive class just to get referred back to a document.

ME: Those documents are called REQUIRED READING for a reason. If you’d read it as you were supposed to, you wouldn’t need to be referred back to the document.

The instructor's citation requirements did not follow what three of my previous instructors found correct.

ME: Your previous instructors never even noticed your incorrect citations until that last one who did notice and required you to take a class to learn how to cite sources so as not to plagiarize. That's why you're taking my class on how to avoid plagiarism.

I had to refer to too many other sources and examples.

ME: Umm exactly what do you expect to do in college?

I felt the course was more related to writing essays.

ME: Ummm this is a WRITING course focusing on essay-writing. What part of that did you not understand when signing up for the class?

I did not like being reminded of the late submission rules every time I turned in something late.

ME: When I send out notices that your work is late, it’s more for my documentation in case of your complaints later than it is a reminder for you.

For a mandatory class, I feel like there was more focus on piling on the work rather than actually improving the writing skills of students.
ME: LOLOL  This one cracks me up. What in the world did you think you would be doing in college? Especially in a basic writing class that is supposed to prepare you for your academic courses? You can’t learn if you don’t write and OF COURSE you’re going to write a LOT every week in a basic writing course.

And then there are some positive comments – which are few and far between and mostly sent by email instead of put on the course evals. Students like to complain. Students like to have easy professors. However, as one student so aptly stated:

Professor B is one of the toughest I have ever had but never have I felt so satisfied at the end of a course. When she sensed we were down or overwhelmed, she reached out with encouragement and reassurance. I am a better student, leader, person from my interaction with Professor B. Thank you!!!!

And here are a few more that remind me why I truly love teaching:

Brilliant Professor

Professor B provided the tools for me to learn the strategies that enable me to understand the content of the course, and improve my writing skills.

Professor B is an outstanding instructor, I can say I learned and gained so much valuable information and enhanced my writing skills in this course.

Professor B really made me think in this class and pushed me into writing more effectively!! I know how to write a paper using effective language and know what NOT to include in my papers!!

Professor B provided me extra help when I needed it and provided excellent feedback.

Thank you for helping me and answering my questions so fast! I never waited more than the end of the day for answers when I didn't understand something.

Course Evaluations: Good or Not?

So, let's talk about course evaluations. Fun topic, right? For most of us, it's not all that fun, especially if your school uses these to determine if you'll get more classes to teach or maybe even if you'll get a raise. I've gotten both but not based on course evals. Some of my course evals are just horrible and the comments from some students are downright nasty and blatantly false. Hopefully most faculty supervisors know this but let's face it, some don't.

In a nutshell, what happens is that the complainers and whiners fill out course evaluation forms and look at this as an opportunity to really get back at professors who "gave them bad grades." What they don't say is that the students don't do the work and that's why they got bad grades. The funny thing is that the students who send personal emails with wonderful comments don't usually complete course evaluations. They figure that since they emailed, there's no need to do the course eval. Even when I write back thanking them for the email and requesting that they include their comments on the course eval, most don't do that.

Students don't realize that our supervisors often base our continued employment on these course evaluations. So now I have a public and verifiable response to my school for all the nasty and false comments on those evals. I've been doing this for several years. I do this in pre-designed courses as well as in the courses I write and teach.

During the last week, I put up a public discussion board forum called Course Reflection. Then I invite students to tell me what they liked and did not like about the course and to include suggestions for making it better.

I rarely get suggestions these days because I've been doing this for a while and have implemented all the suggestions I used to get when I first started doing this. So my courses are better based on former students' suggestions. Occasionally someone will come up with a new idea but for the most part, they like the classes just fine the way they are currently designed. When I get suggestions for pre-designed classes, I explain that I cannot personally make those changes but that I will pass along the suggestions to the course developers.

This is an official and verifiable record of what students REALLY think of my class and of my teaching. It's right there in the course. I get emails from students all the time but I can't share these with my administrators. So this Course Reflection forum is the perfect way to prove that the majority of my students love my classes. A professor could falsify email comments but there's no way (okay there's always a way but not likely to happen) to do that on a public class forum. I do make copies of these to keep for my records in case a school archives a course and I can't access it any longer. AND supervisors have access to all archived courses and they can go read the comments.

A side note: It's amazing to me how a little anonymity can bring out the very worst in people. When I used to give professors poor evaluations I actually signed my name and requested the the person who read the course evaluations contact me. I actually had one professor contact me once. We had a very nice conversation.

So if you're a good professor who is receiving horrible course evaluations from your whiny slacker students and not enough good comments, consider using a public reflection forum at the end of your class session.