On the last day many classes met last semester, students were invited to switch seats and grade their instructor on how effective his or her course and teaching actually were. However, some students, deciding their evaluations “didn’t matter anyways,” chose instead to put down their red pens and not fill out the forms.
“They’re wrong because it does matter,” said Paul Christopher, a program assistant in the English department. “It can determine a lot of things: tenure, if they’re applying for a job, if they’re up for an award, pay. [Evaluations] are paid attention to.”
Christopher added, “I know what they’re saying from when I was a student, but now that I’ve seen it from this end, I know [evaluations] have weight.”
Evaluations are filled out and collected by students enrolled in English courses and brought via manila envelopes to Christopher. “The instructors aren’t allowed to look at them until they’ve turned in their grades,” he said.
Christopher then sorts through the forms, removes blanks and sends completed forms to a testing and evaluation center to be counted. When the data comes back, it is gathered with the student written comments and archived for five years.
“It’s an organizational nightmare,” said Christopher. He explained that the evaluations were the major focus of his work for up to a month’s time, but it was well worth the effort.
“People are always coming in to look at evaluations,” he said.
Professor Tim Allen said the number of evaluations he reads varies. “One semester I read absolutely every one of about a hundred of them,” he said. “But I’m not sure they change much what I do.”
On his own evaluations, Allen said, “Some are very flattering, I might say. Some are mostly just angry. But if there are not people saying that, then I’m not pressing the students hard enough.”
Allen believed that although the evaluations weren’t terribly informative to him, “for young professors it can really help — especially some who have clearly missed the boat.”
Allen cautioned students on what they write, though. “Don’t try to get even. Don’t get angry. Try to be critical in a coherent and constructive way.”
Student frustration with the evaluations may derive from not being able to see the results of their own critiques.
For a student considering a particular course or instructor, accessing the evaluation results can be difficult, said Christropher, who pointed out that students are generally not allowed to view evaluation results and added, “It never really comes up.”
“We don’t want to deal with 40,000 students wanting to access the reports,” he said.
Christopher instead suggested students check the website maintained by the Associated Students of Madison. The site, at www.asm.wisc.edu/evals, ranks classes based on the evaluations. Most of the courses listed are set on a scale of one to five with a ranking of five the highest.
The site, however, is incomplete. Not all courses are listed, with one Herald employee finding only two of eight courses he had taken in his tenure at UW. The last semester listed was spring 2002. Also, student comments are not transcribed. “It would take forever to do,” Christopher said. “We’re always looking for better ways to organize. Students only see one side of it. It does seem impersonal. But for a campus of 40,000 students, we do the best we can.”
