I recently had my final “seminar” meeting of the semester with the students enrolled in my United States history survey course. I lecture to these students on Monday and Wednesday of each week and then I meet with four small groups of them on Thursday and Friday afternoons.
On Friday afternoon–my fourth and last seminar of the week (and the semester)–I led the students through what I thought was a very good session on Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. I then thanked the class for a good semester and told them that I appreciated their willingness to take the class seriously and engage with the ideas that I tried to present to them. This particular seminar included a lot of juniors and seniors (who were obviously putting off taking this general education class until the end of their college experience) and as a result the conversation and level of engagement was a lot higher than the other seminars, which were made up of mostly first and second-year students. I praised them for their effort and told them that I really enjoyed teaching them this semester.
As I expressed my appreciation to them and for them, it suddenly hit me that I had planned to have them do a teacher evaluation of the course. I can honestly say that my words of appreciation for them were from the heart, but now I realized that those words of thanks might come across to some students in the class as a lame attempt to garner a good evaluation from them. I jokingly told them that I really meant what I said about their performance during the semester and that I was not just “saying that” to get them to write nice things about me on the evaluation. They laughed and we had a good time with my blunder, but I could not help thinking that some of them thought I had tried to manipulate them by trying to stack the course evaluation deck in my favor.
I should also confess that I did not lose any sleep over this incident. As a professor with tenure I am not overly worried about negative evaluations. But I did wonder how many pre-tenured professors who need strong student evaluations in order to get promoted have been tempted to give the students what they want rather than what they need.
There is a lot of weight placed on student evaluations these days–probably too much weight. Most students, when filling out such an evaluation, do not fully understand that their comments could impact the career of their professor. What appears to be a fifteen-minute exercise at the end of a class period can have serious implications when those half-baked critiques find their way into a tenure folder. It should thus not surprise us that professors feel the need to appeal to the consumer instincts of their students in order to secure good evaluations.
I started thinking a bit about this after reading Diane Auer Jones’s recent post over at the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s “Brainstorm” blog.
Jones writes:
In a perfect world — in fact, in the world in which many of us once lived — the instructor evaluation would serve as an important tool for seeking student feedback on, for example, the organization of the syllabus, the amount of time devoted to one topic versus another, the effectiveness of new pedagogical techniques, the use of instructional technology, or even the readability of a new textbook or laboratory manual. Many years ago when I was a faculty member, I actually used to look forward to reading my students’ comments, which were generally thoughtful, informative, and helpful to me in designing my course for the next semester. Sure, there was an occasional nasty comment, but comments that ranked me somewhere near God could be ignored as easily as those that put me somewhere beneath the Devil.
But with college administrators eager to quantify the quality of the teaching that takes place in their institutions, Jones argues that schools were forced to adopt a “student-as-consumer model” in which the “instructor evaluation took on the role of customer-satisfaction survey.” Jones continues:
it no longer mattered whether or not the instructor actually both forced and helped the student learn how to balance a chemical equation or speak a difficult foreign language. Instead, the focus switched to whether or not the student, as a consumer, “liked” the experience.
With this model in place, the “good” teachers are the ones who give the students what they want, which is usually some form of entertainment. These teachers fill their classes and win teaching awards. As Jones notes:
For this generation of students who are accustomed to getting their news from comedians rather than serious journalists — and for whom educational theorists had transformed their K-12 experience into one of edutainment — they may not even know how to evaluate anything other than whether or not your class made them feel good, or made them laugh, or helped the time pass by quickly, or didn’t interrupt their social life too much (could they keep up with their texting and Facebook dialogues while sitting through your lectures?).
As you might imagine, Jones rejects this “student as consumer” model of higher education:
It is time that we help our students understand what it means to be a scholar. They know what it means to be a consumer, but we need to teach them how to be a learner. We shouldn’t be shocked that they behave as consumers given that we lure them to our campuses with fancy marketing brochures that make vast promises about amenities and travel opportunities and focus little attention on learning opportunities. But at some point in the process, we need to teach them how to learn. One way to get started would be to structure instructor evaluations in a way that helps the student understand the role of the instructor, which is not to spoon-feed, to entertain, or to reduce rigor, but instead to lead, to motivate, to challenge, and to help the student question his or her own beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, and knowledge.
Jones is right. It is time that we stop serving donuts to our class on the day the teacher evaluation is to be conducted. Fun field trips, funny cartoons, and fancy power-point presentations should be utilized more in service to the educational process than our own professional advancement. I realize that this is easy to say as a tenured professor, but I do think it is imperative that college administrators do something to weaken the temptation of appealing to the consumer impulses of students.
This comment has been removed by the author.
here's certainly truth in what you write. As an educator — one who is now charged with Division level assessment responsibilities — I understand how difficult evaluating teachers can be.
Observations are useful to some extent. However a teacher being observed can 1) “turn it on” for the special evaluators day, 2) get flustered and have a bad day, or 3) be unfairly evaluated by someone with an axe to grind or incompetently evaluated by someone who doesn't understand the course.
Student evaluations are also useful to some extent, but largely demonstrate 1) easiness, or softness of professor, and 2) attractiveness in looks and/or personality.
On a personal note I get very good evaluations and adopt an “agreeable” personality with both my students and the administration. Our Division Deans are extremely overburdened with work (but hey they make more $$ than profs). They don't want headaches. Learn to make allowances and don't be a trouble maker. That — in addition to doing my work, always showing up to every class on time (I have yet to cancel a class for personal reasons in 5 years of full time teaching; but hey I have no kids), doing my administrative responsibilities, teaching the course objectives I'm required to — has gotten me very far.
I try to give the students the best of both worlds. I'm probably too soft on them. Yet, unlike some notorious softies, I do my job and teach the required material. Letting students out early and using most of the class to discuss “fun stuff” instead of course material will only get you far with so many (probably too many) students.
Well put, Jon. I can't disagree with anything you have said here.
I really don't like doing peer evaluation of my colleagues. To be honest, I can't really tell whether someone is a good teacher by sitting in on a class or two. (Hopefully someone in the Messiah College administration is reading this and will decide not to assign me any more peer reviews). As a result, I am usually far too easy on them.
Good point about peer evals; I will only do peer evaluations when I can sit in on 7 class meetings. One or two are a waste of time.
John, I don't entirely disagree with your post on student evaluations. But I think there is a case to be made that treating students as “consumers,” if that is what we want to call it, can be for everyone's good.
I'm thinking of John Adams' caution that if men are not angels then it does no good to design a political system that only works for angels. You have to take people as they are. With that caution in mind, we profs have to take students as they are. It does no one any good to wish very hard that students were more like us, “learners” right out of the box.
It is unfair to students, I think, to label them as “consumers” as if all of them only want to be entertained. Some of them want to learn, maybe even most of them. But if American culture has socialized them to attend best to content that comes via entertainment, then those are the cards that have been dealt to us. I say we deal with it instead of complaining that we don't teach other students at another time in another place.
Now I will make an unfair generalization: the complaint about student consumerism is too often the product of the wounded ego of profs. “It's not about you,” they emote, “it's really about me!” In other words, the complaint about student consumerism is itself a kind of reverse-consumerism, where the prof is the consumer who isn't getting what she wants. And what does she want? Students to respectfully bow to her will.
Unfair? You bet. So is the charge of consumerism against students.
As a historian of consumerism, I say we're all consumers here, so let's stop pointing the finger at students.
There's nothing wrong, and a lot that is right, a lot that is incarnational even, about coming down from our pedestals on Mt Olympus and learning to see the world the way 18 year old novices see it. This is not treating them as consumers so much as it taking them seriously, and taking teaching seriously.
Nothing I say here should be construed to mean that profs should merely entertain, or that in walking alongside learners we don't need to take them somewhere. But I'm all for a little more “consumerism” in teaching and learning if it means a few less boring professors, “boring” because they can't be bothered to see the world the way the student Other does.
I will only do peer evaluations when I can sit in on 7 class meetings. One or two are a waste of time.
This is a good idea except for two problems (as I see them).
1) At least where I teach (a community college), no faculty peer evaluator would agree to 7 class meetings; we just don't have time. However, minimum contact load is 15 credits a semester. At a, for instance, law school where minimum load is 6 credits a semester (and where teachers start with a 6 figure salary!) it might be different. As a law student, I do remember when some profs were up for tenure, other law profs evaluating them for numerous classes (and for the entire class).
2. Unless a prof. could just get used to the evaluator like s/he was another student, that would be an extremely unpleasant, nerve wracking experience for the evaluated prof. I think this is a matter of subjective feelings. Some profs. would be able to adjust to feeling. Others wouldn't. That would freak me out.
On a personal note, I would feel more comfortable with a camera in the classroom that recorded everything than a prof./evaluator in the classroom that sat in for 7 classes. Some colleges do record everything for “open university” programs. Perhaps that kind of thing could be incorporated for evaluation purposes.