Everyone’s heard that saying about the working world: You won’t always like the people you have to work with, but you have to work with them anyway. But the truth is, getting an education is no different—you may not like or agree with the people who teach you, but a serious student will figure out how to learn from those people anyway.
Everyone’s heard that saying about the working world: You won’t always like the people you have to work with, but you have to work with them anyway. But the truth is, getting an education is no different—you may not like or agree with the people who teach you, but a serious student will figure out how to learn from those people anyway.
Not every teacher can be fun or witty or even interesting, and even though those traits can make the difference between a good teacher and a great one, the thing to keep in mind is that a teacher’s job is to help you learn—not to entertain you. And one of our greatest responsibilities as students is to facilitate that learning process in any way we can, including the very important task of filling out end-of-term teacher evaluations.
I know, I know. It’s boring. After the grind of a full term of homework, papers and those dreaded finals, filling out some Internet form seems like a total drag. And it’s easy to convince yourself that there’s not a point.
I mean, if you liked your instructor, why bother critiquing his (or her) performance? And if you didn’t like him, you probably never want to think about him again, and that means trashing the evaluation form without a second thought.
But it’s like government: if you don’t participate—if you don’t vote—you can’t really complain about the outcome, can you? Evaluating your instructors isn’t something you do for your own benefit; it’s for the benefit of those hapless students who come after you.
Help them to learn more effectively by letting your teachers know how they can teach more effectively. After all, you’ve undoubtedly benefited from the opinions of students who came before you.
Consider it a privilege of the democratic process we Americans love so much.
Imagine the tedium of getting an education in 19th century England, reciting dry epic poems and getting smacked on the knuckles for forgetting a word. Do you think any of those poor students had a say in the way their teachers taught them? They certainly did not.
Even worse, picture a classroom in some poverty-stricken region of Africa or the Middle East; think about how difficult it is to learn there, where teachers are as scarce as books and pencils. Those students are undoubtedly just happy to have the opportunity to go to school, such as it is.
We Portland State students have it pretty good, and the least we can do (besides pay for it) is participate! Seriously, we’re investing too much into our educations to not help the system work better—after all, we’re the ones who have the most to lose.
So I advise PSU students to contribute to making higher education better for all of us—and to put at least as much effort into it as you might put into, say, a Yelp review or a post on your WordPress blog. This is the information age, after all.
Don’t bother filling out a teacher evaluation if you’re just going to say, “Professor So-and-so is boring. I didn’t like this class.” The value of an evaluation is in the specificity.
If your employer was evaluating you, and all he told you was that you’re not very good at your job, you would find it pretty difficult to improve.
Extend your instructors the courtesy of being as detailed in your assessment as you’d want them to be in the classroom. And try to consider their feelings: Criticism should be constructive and perhaps accompanied by suggestions for improvement.
There is no need for insults, ever. And by all means, if you have nothing but positive things to say about an instructor, say them all. I’m sure they appreciate praise as much as anyone else.
Departments use the evaluation forms in variousways, most commonly in promotion and tenure reviews of individual faculty members, and to meet the requirements of specialized (program or disciplinary) accreditation, where applicable.
The Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, the accrediting commission for Portland State, requires all institutions that it accredits to conduct course evaluations, but does not address how they should be used.
I know it can be discouraging to think that the effectiveness of an evaluation depends partly upon the teachers—they are as free to ignore students’ suggestions as they are to implement them—but just like in the workplace or the government, that’s not enough reason to not participate. In an era when higher education is more expensive than ever, and when college enrollment is at a record high, there’s never been more reason to put in your two cents.
Dr. Kenneth Peterson, a professor in the department of curriculum and instruction in the Graduate School of Education, and the author of “Effective Teacher Evaluation,” said that students’ reports “give us essential information about teaching quality, and departments take the results seriously.” He added that “students are fair” and that most are able to “separate merely liking an instructor from reporting her effectiveness. Much research has been done on student reports; they clearly have a place in teacher evaluation and department decisions.”
Teacher evaluations offer us the chance to help our teachers, help our fellow students and help ourselves. And for what we pay to attend college, we ought to take advantage of what voice we do have—especially when so many students are demanding an even more active role in their educations.
How can we protest rising costs, fewer classes, or any other issue related to education if we are not fully exercising the rights we already have? Do the responsible thing, do the constructive thing—heck, do the easy thing, the form is sitting right there in your inbox anyway—and evaluate your teachers at the end of every term.
