Let’s discuss student opinion forms, course evaluations, student evaluation of teaching forms, whatever term you use. Article after article year after year highlight how toxic they are. More recently the emphasis has been on how they differ according to instructor gender and race—though it’s really the STUDENTS, not the forms, that are biased. See
- Inside Higher Ed in 2020;
- Inside Higher Ed again in 2019;
- The Chronicle in 2018;
- The Journal of Public Economics in 2017;
- Inside Higher Ed (AGAIN) in 2016;
- Couldn’t find anything from 2015, but frankly I didn’t try that hard. So here’s a Slate article from 2014;
- And my favorite based on years: a paper from The Journal of Educational Psychology in 1974!!!!
Moreover, these issues are mass-publicized—this isn’t exclusive to Inside Higher Ed. This topic has been covered by the Washington Post, Forbes, and NPR.
What isn’t covered as much (though it makes a brief appearance in the NPR article) are the other negative realities of student course evals beyond the race/gender bias. How they discourage faculty from trying new things in the classroom at the risk of having lower evaluations. How they encourage faculty to be lenient to the point of not actually teaching the students anything and becoming an “easy A.” How evals pressure faculty to teach to the forms because they are used so heavily as a measure of teaching quality and effectiveness when one goes up for tenure or a contract renewal.
It’s past the point of being sad and is now just downright ridiculous. Check out this article from chroniclevitae that discusses baking brownies or cookies for students before evals. And here’s a lovely blogpost (note the sarcasm) that suggests—and I quote: “Lie and tell [students] you know they’re working hard.” It also echoes chroniclevitae in recommending chocolate.
I’m frankly tired of seeing these articles about how terrible evaluations are. It’s not news. We know. We’re just choosing not to do anything about it.