One of the Joys
and banes of teaching in higher education is the dreaded course evaluation. I
am talking about the evaluations which provide students the opportunity to evaluate
a professor and the ten or fifteen week course in which they have just shared considerable
time and effort. On a single piece of
paper (usually one sided) the student is able to “rate” the professor, the
subject matter, the course textbooks, the professor’s style of teaching, the
way the professor interacted with and treated the students and whether or not
the student learned anything. In the context of a seminary, the student might
also be asked how this class helped them understand their “calling” and whether
or not it was “spiritually nurturing.”
All of this
happens anonymously, usually on the last day of class when the final exam and
papers are due and everyone is tired, perhaps a bit grumpy and ready to make a
dash for Christmas, spring or summer break. And rarely have I witnessed students spend more than ten minutes on the evaluation. Many of them go through it as a perfunctory exercise. And they do so very quickly. It is their last
required act before breaking free from the professor and the class.
In spite of
my rather snarky description of the process, I admit that I can’t think of
another way to evaluate a course. Students who have paid good money should get
a good course and if they get less than the syllabus claimed and if the
professor was unprepared or didn't put forth the effort to educate, then the
student has a right to respond, and anonymous evaluations provide a venue for
them to speak without fear of being persecuted by said professor. I can recall
on two occasions using the evaluation form as a way to let the professor and
the administration know that I was not happy with either an absentee professor
or he/she’s lack of preparation.
Sitting on
the other side of those evaluations has been interesting, however. There is a love
hate relationship. I actually find those who simply give me all “10s” with no
comments or suggestions to be quite unhelpful. Perhaps the course was everything
the student and I both expected, but I doubt it. I greatly appreciate the handwritten
notes, both positive and critical, that help me know what I am doing right and
what I am doing wrong. And I have made adjustments to my courses based on those
comments.
Some
comments I simply ignore. No matter how
many times I am told that I require too much reading or too much vocabulary in
Greek I simply remind myself that I have given the students what they need to
be successful in the course and, hopefully, life. And I check my requirements against other
colleagues and institutional standards to make sure that I am not “out of
whack.”
What really
gets me going is when I get two evaluations from the same class with completely
opposite comments. There are times when I wonder if they were in the same
course. I have had evaluations that read as if the two students wrote from a
similar script, but from opposing sides. The one that seems to always get me is
about my use of humor. One student will comment how they like when I lace humor
through my lectures and make funny quips. The other will call me an arrogant,
sarcastic individual and demeaning to students. Whew. I am never sure which one
of those to work with. I sometimes wonder if I am a bit Jekyll and Hyde.
Along these
lines, John Stackhouse, who teaches at Regent College, has a good post on
student evaluations. He and others have wondered how students can be so mean sometimes.
But he also offers ten valuable tips for reading them. Here are snippet views
of his tips, but I suggest you read his full post here.
- Read evaluations when you have time
to read them slowly. Don’t read them when you can only skim them.
- Read them when you’re in a good mood.
We all tend to give much more attention to negatives than positives, so don’t
begin what will likely be a challenging process already in a less-than-optimal
frame of mind.
- Read them with a nice snack nearby.
Keep a steady supply of goodness running through your system: fresh fruit,
nuts, smoothies, chocolate, milkshakes, Cabernet Sauvignon (only California or
Bordeaux will do), single malt whisky…be sure to coddle yourself a bit so as to
maximize your receptivity.
- Read them analytically. I was annoyed
this time ’round by a powerful phrase that stuck out: One student decided that
he (it might have been a “she,” but I’m guessing “he” is male) didn’t like the
number of stories I told to illustrate the various points of epistemology I was
teaching to an introductory class last term.
- Read them humbly. Upon further
reading and reflection, perhaps that student was at least partly right. I
probably did overdo the stories.
- Read them with intent to improve.
- Read all the data. Every place I have
taught has used a combination of ranking questions (from “Strongly Agree” to
“Strongly Disagree” or the like) plus opportunities for comments. Don’t look at
the average scores in the former questions without also looking at the particular
scores. I seem invariably to have one, two, or three people who really, really don’t like me or the course I teach.
- Read them with a colleague. A
colleague shares your values but doesn't share your responsibility in this
course, so she can hear better than you can what’s being said about it, and
you, particularly if it is something negative.
- Get colleagues to sit in on your
classes and critique you rigorously. You've got to really want this, and you've got to pick the colleagues carefully, of course. But there is nothing like peer
review to make you self-conscious, and self-consciousness is good especially
for veteran professors as we are inclined to get too comfortable in our
classes.
- Pray over the evaluations. God is the
Master Teacher. What does he want you to learn from them?
In previous posts I have touched on the problem of how Christians should handle passages in the Bible that do not line up with the way we think in the 21st century. In particular, how do we interpret and apply passages in the Bible that endorse violent acts like that of genocide? 
