Monday, August 6, 2007

An Evaluation of...Evaluations

I just got my student evals from last semester, and I have to say that they were...interesting. There was a lot more variety than usual, but even so, I have spotted some general trends in evaluations over the past few semesters. For me they seem to fall into one of four categories:

#1 Student complaints that one does not take seriously.*
"We're only frosh, we shouldn't be expected to [insert assignment here]."
"You assigned too many readings."
"You grade too hard. It is history class, not English, so lighten up a little."

#2 Student suggestions that merit consideration.
"Need more tests, as odd as that sounds." (I did away with tests the last two semesters and only assigned weekly reading quizzes and papers. This may need to be rethought.)

#3 Praise for the instructor and/or course.
"WOOT!"
"I very much enjoyed X assignment and would recommend it be assigned again."
"I didn't know history could be so interesting! Thanks!"

AND, FINALLY... (drumroll please)

#4 The truly outrageous rant.
"X assignment was stupid...DON'T EVER DO THAT AGAIN. You're too young to be such a bitch."

I think that last student forgot that they were supposed to provide constructive criticism and concrete suggestions for improvement. Ah, well.
*These tend to come from students that are not yet fully aware of what college-level work *truly* is. At least that is my theory, since this was a 100-level course with primarily freshman, but one section of it did have quite a few non-traditional students because it met in the early evening. No one in that section made any comments similar to these. I'd like to think that's because they are older and wiser, and thus know and understand what is expected of them as students, whereas freshman are new and haven't been around the block, so to speak.

4 comments:

Secret Squirrel said...

Did they really tell you you were too young to be a bitch? The nerve!

Twirly said...

I'm teaching two freshman science courses next semester and I'm nervous about teaching freshman (as opposed to my normal juniors because they'll be all babies and complain-y) any suggestions?

and bitch...that's my pet peeve - the misuse of the word bitch....RAR

Anonymous said...

heh, I love the "it's not an english class!" complaint. Okay, no i don't but it amuses me because it's so delightfully clueless about the nature of academic work.

TeachingClio said...

Yes, the "bitch" quote is verbatim. Crazy, huh?