Teacher evaluations

[eigen]

I was wondering how many students out there have to fill out these teacher evaluation per semester. I assume most if not all students throughtout the country do. Well my problem with them is that most students are childish and will punish the teacher if the student performed poorly no matter if the teacher was a good teacher or not.So in turn professors lessen the difficulty of the course so that they will receive better scores. This is the cause ( one of ) behind grade inflation.I am a math major and so the teachers dont really care if you pass or not nor does the dept and so the evaluations dont carry much weight.But it seems like in other depts the evaluation mean alot more.

We have to fill these out and so that I dont contribute to the problem I always put my name on the form but still answer honestly.

Any thoughts on how to weed out the truly poor teacher from those whose classes are merely challenging?

 

[yankeesfan]

i do.

 

[eigen]

Originally posted by: yankeesfan
i do.

Thanks for the that informative comment.

 

[yankeesfan]

How about you talk to the superintendent? There is really no way that you can get a teach fired by yourself..

 

[eigen]

Originally posted by: yankeesfan
How about you talk to the superintendent? There is really no way that you can get a teach fired by yourself..

Are you just typing random thoughts as they flow into your brain. My post has nothing to do with me wanting to get a teacher fired.
I want to stop teachers from getting fired just because the classes are difficult.

 

[TwiceOver]

Definately. Schools take them to heart, if a teacher is worthless, why continue to employ them?

 

[BigJ]

There's actually a service online called pick-a-prof I think. It let's you look at student's evaluations for specific teachers and courses in your school.

 

[eigen]

My post has nothing to do with me wnating to pick a prof. or getting one in trouble. I want to KNOW WHAT YOU GUYS THINK OF EVALUATIONS AND HOW THEY RELATE TO GRADE INFLATION/LESSENING OF DIFFICULTY.

 

[eigen]

Originally posted by: TwiceOver
Definately. Schools take them to heart, if a teacher is worthless, why continue to employ them?

Thats my point but what if they receive poor evaluations just because they are hard?Which seems to be the case in most of my classes.

 

[MartyMcFly3]

Dude you are heartless. These professors want to teach and you're going to give them a bad review just because you didnt do as well in the course as you could have? you cold bastard.

 

[mugs]

I see what you mean eigen... It's unfortunate that grade inflation occurs, because it cheapens the accomplishments of those who actually did deserve good grades. Evaluations aren't the only cause of it though - schools want their students to graduate with good GPAs so they can get good jobs and send money back to the school.

As for your specific question - I think the only way to solve that problem is to rely less on student feedback and actually put more effort into evaluating professors - have another professor in the department sit in on classes, look over exams, etc. Students don't know what's best for them.

 

[Injury]

Well, teachers aren't stupid. They know when someone is BSing them because they have a poor attitude. When there are 30 students in a class, 20 have C's or below, and 20 of the evaluations are bitching, and 10 are saying that everything is good with some decent advice, you tend to see what is going on.

 

[tomt4535]

i just filled one out tonight for the teacher whos class im in right now. as you can tell im really paying attention.

 

[jaydee]

It's ratemyprofessors.com

Best way to find out about profs though is from upperclassmen

 

[IamElectro]

The lab I worked at school printed and processed the evaluations. We printed over 90k evals each semester and received back over 70k of those to be processed. The way they get these high numbers is to do the evals on the day of the class final before giving the test.
One or 2 students being childish about thier grade in a class of 25 do not affect things as a whole. They only show concern and read the handwriten parts when the class as a whole rates a teacher/professor poorly or thier eval score drops signifigantly from thier previous evals.

 

[Whisper]

I'd actually say that if anything, most students seem to be "too nice" as opposed to "childish" and harsh with their evaluations. And as others have stated, one or two bad reviews in a class of 25+ isn't going to throw up any red flags. I'd think that administration only gets involved if a professor consistently garners a majority of less-than-stellar scores on their reviews.

 

[EyeMWing]

Here, our evaluations are done by having the administration come down once per semester to observe each teacher for one period. In general, they get to pick which class gets observed and the class cooperates by putting on a good show.

I recall last year - my english teacher, a complete and total NOOB was to be observed. He was worried to death - honestly thought he was going to get fired. This is because we were complete and total boobs and tortured him ENDLESSLY.

He was ready to clean out his desk immediately following our class - and he was more than a little shocked when we behaved like the perfect little angels that students are supposed to be.

His evaluation was spotless, except for the fact that he didn't assign homework (booo hoo, cry me a river). The very next day, things were back to normal - sneaking into the closet to make out, stealing his gradebook, turning all the desks and chairs in the room around backwards, covering the mirrors in his overhead projector with sheets of paper so it comes on but doesn't work, etc.

 

[EpsiIon]

Originally posted by: eigen
I was wondering how many students out there have to fill out these teacher evaluation per semester. I assume most if not all students throughtout the country do. Well my problem with them is that most students are childish and will punish the teacher if the student performed poorly no matter if the teacher was a good teacher or not.So in turn professors lessen the difficulty of the course so that they will receive better scores. This is the cause ( one of ) behind grade inflation.I am a math major and so the teachers dont really care if you pass or not nor does the dept and so the evaluations dont carry much weight.But it seems like in other depts the evaluation mean alot more.

We have to fill these out and so that I dont contribute to the problem I always put my name on the form but still answer honestly.

Any thoughts on how to weed out the truly poor teacher from those whose classes are merely challenging?

For me, it's always about how bored I am during class / how well the teacher communicates ideas. I have one class now that is almost unbearable. The book is both more entertaining AND clearer than the professor. That's just about as bad as it gets. When we go, my friends and I play the game where you fold a piece of paper up and each person draws a part of a body w/o looking at the other parts. We've got some pretty good ones up on the wall.


Some indicators of bad professors:
-Uses PowerPoint.
-Uses pre-made slides that came with the book.
-Simply reads off of whatever reference material he/she is using.
-Doesn't convey any sort of enthusiasm in the subject.
-Can't speak clear English. I'm sorry, but if your English is unintelligible, you shouldn't teach in the US. I should be focussing on concepts, not on trying to decipher what you said.
-Gives tedious and irrelevant assignments.
-Tests on you obscurities rather than concepts.

I have had all of these (most of them multiple times). I seriously don't understand why these people get to teach. Let them do research, but don't let them near the students.

[EDIT]Spelling. Apparently, I shouldn't teach in the US. [/EDIT]

 

[EyeMWing]

Originally posted by: EpsiIon

Originally posted by: eigen
I was wondering how many students out there have to fill out these teacher evaluation per semester. I assume most if not all students throughtout the country do. Well my problem with them is that most students are childish and will punish the teacher if the student performed poorly no matter if the teacher was a good teacher or not.So in turn professors lessen the difficulty of the course so that they will receive better scores. This is the cause ( one of ) behind grade inflation.I am a math major and so the teachers dont really care if you pass or not nor does the dept and so the evaluations dont carry much weight.But it seems like in other depts the evaluation mean alot more.

We have to fill these out and so that I dont contribute to the problem I always put my name on the form but still answer honestly.

Any thoughts on how to weed out the truly poor teacher from those whose classes are merely challenging?

For me, it's always about how bored I am during class / how well the teacher communicates ideas. I have one class now that is almost unbearable. The book is both more entertaining AND clearer than the professor. That's just about as bad as it gets. When we go, my friends and I play the game where you fold a piece of paper up and each person draws a part of a body w/o looking at the other parts. We've got some pretty good ones up on the wall.


Some indicators of bad professors:
-Uses PowerPoint.
-Uses pre-made slides that came with the book.
-Simply reads off of whatever reference material he/she is using.
-Doesn't convey any sort of enthusiasm in the subject.
-Can't speak clear English. I'm sorry, but if your English is unintelligible, you shouldn't teach in the US. I should be focussing on concepts, not on trying to decipher what you said.
-Gives tedious and irrelevant assignments.
-Tests on you obscurities rather than concepts.

I have had all of these (most of them multiple times). I seriously don't understand why these people get to teach. Let them do research, but don't let them near the students.

[EDIT]Spelling. Apparently, I shouldn't teach in the US. [/EDIT]

Powerpoint is a tool to be used occasionally. Like, once or twice. It's sole purpose should be a graphical aid - charts and stuff. It shouldn't be the whole f'ing lesson. I had a HS course like that once - I changed my schedule and RAN.

 

[MDE]

I have to do evaluations for every class each quarter. Most students tend to be WAY too lenient in their evaluations because they like hte teacher or the class was easy. I figure that I won't be taking the class again, so why should I care if it'll get harder? I actually tell the truth on the things. I'll never forget the first math class I had, the teacher couldn't speak intelligible English, wouldn't take the tiniest bit of critisicsm (you'd prove him wrong, he'd deny it and do the problem a different way that 'proved' you were wrong), and just flat out couldn't answer questions. I completely slammed him in the evaluation, and rightly so. Thank goodness for every horrible teacher like that there's a wonderful one that actually can do half of what's in their job description.

 

[EpsiIon]

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Powerpoint is a tool to be used occasionally. Like, once or twice. It's sole purpose should be a graphical aid - charts and stuff. It shouldn't be the whole f'ing lesson. I had a HS course like that once - I changed my schedule and RAN.

Exactly! I actually have a decent PowerPoint professor this quarter, but it's because he walks around, gets excited, and tells us cool stories about "when we discovered buffer overflows." (He's one of the original computer security guys).

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

I had to fill them out every semester in college. And even now that I'm out of college I'm still getting them.

One of my professors is up for tenure and they selected me (among a few others I'm sure) to send a survey out to.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: EpsiIon

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Powerpoint is a tool to be used occasionally. Like, once or twice. It's sole purpose should be a graphical aid - charts and stuff. It shouldn't be the whole f'ing lesson. I had a HS course like that once - I changed my schedule and RAN.

Exactly! I actually have a decent PowerPoint professor this quarter, but it's because he walks around, gets excited, and tells us cool stories about "when we discovered buffer overflows." (He's one of the original computer security guys).

A boring prof is a boring prof with or without powerpoint, powerpoint just gives you a guide to take notes. If the prof reads off the powerpoint slides, he's not using them properly. Powerpoint is used in business as well, you might as well get used to it.

 

[EpsiIon]

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: EpsiIon

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Powerpoint is a tool to be used occasionally. Like, once or twice. It's sole purpose should be a graphical aid - charts and stuff. It shouldn't be the whole f'ing lesson. I had a HS course like that once - I changed my schedule and RAN.

Exactly! I actually have a decent PowerPoint professor this quarter, but it's because he walks around, gets excited, and tells us cool stories about "when we discovered buffer overflows." (He's one of the original computer security guys).

A boring prof is a boring prof with or without powerpoint, powerpoint just gives you a guide to take notes. If the prof reads off the powerpoint slides, he's not using them properly. Powerpoint is used in business as well, you might as well get used to it.

Right. What I'm saying is that most professors don't use it properly. That's part of what makes them crappy professors.

 

[yankeesfan]

Originally posted by: eigen

Originally posted by: yankeesfan
How about you talk to the superintendent? There is really no way that you can get a teach fired by yourself..

Are you just typing random thoughts as they flow into your brain. My post has nothing to do with me wanting to get a teacher fired.
I want to stop teachers from getting fired just because the classes are difficult.

I admit that I didn't read all of your post.