Professors at Dal have expressed a wide range of feelings in regards to student ratings of instruction being posted online and accessible to students starting September 2011.
Dalhousie Senate approved a policy statement last month for course evaluations, stating that they will be undertaken in all applicable university courses; the questions will be standardized; and the summary results to those common questions is what will be available to students.
Carrie Dawson, the president of the Dalhousie Faculty Association, says while she is sympathetic to the argument that students want to make informed decisions when they choose their classes, she adds she’s depressed by the consumerist logic at work.
She also points out that faculty do not have access to student transcripts when they sit down to mark exams or papers, thus grade the work without any prejudice. “And I think that students would agree that that is a good thing,” says Dr. Dawson, associate professor in the Department of English. “So I don't think we should treat transparency as a be all and end all, because there are perfectly good reasons, for example, why our students are not fully transparent to us.”
Dr. Dawson noted privacy as one example and some flaws with the opt-in choice. Keeping files private are particularly important for people on limited term or pre-tenure. “Choosing not to opt-in is not a realistic alternative for people who do not have tenure or are not on tenure-track appointments. Those folks are very vulnerable and if they do not opt-in, it will look as though they have something to hide, which is not necessarily the case.”
The DFA president isn’t the only one with views, pro and con, about course evaluations, as reporter Michelle Hampson found out when she approached professors for their views on the subject.
| “I don’t see any problem with that at all. It’s a good thing. I don’t expect many people will mind.” — Denis Riordan, Professor, Computer Science | ||
| “I think it’s a good idea, despite the fact that some feel uncertain about this. But I think when professors know that the information will be public, they may make extra efforts to perform well in the class. And those professors who are already doing a great job, they have nothing to worry about. The only concern is the comments available on the website. It all depends how they clean the gun." — Anatoliy Gruzd, Assistant Professor, Information Management | ||
| “I would want students to pick their classes based on interest and a desire to learn, not on the cult of celebrity and popularity. I worry that online rankings are too much the power of transient opinion and not a really good measure of someone’s teaching ability or the value of a class.” — Claire Campbell, Associate Professor, History and Canadian Studies | ||
| “I can understand, given the pressures that students are under financially, that they want to get the most out of their degree. But I am not convinced that the student evaluations and the kinds of questions asked on them, and the way that they’re used, are actually going to help students in making those decisions. So I don’t see the pedagogical benefits of using student evaluations as a way to select courses. And I feel that there are enough informal mechanisms that students use already—facebook, word of mouth—to be able to avoid teachers who aren’t great. It feels like this is just going to set up a whole lot of new tensions between professors and students that aren’t going to be beneficial in the learning environment.” — Fiona Martin, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology | ||
| “I think it's reasonable (for course evaluations) to be made available. My view is that there is some information in those evaluations and people are paying for the education. They deserve to get that kind of information.” — Josef Zwanziger, Professor, Chemistry | ||
| “I think that it’s fine because students anyway talk about professors even without having formal processes to do so. So it’s not uncommon knowledge what they think about particular professors anyway.” | ||
| “I’m fine with it. Most students know anyways, just from talking with other students, about the courses they’re going to take. With engineering it’s a bit different because you don’t have much choice in the courses that you take, so you can’t back out of the course.” — Craig Lake, Associate Professor, Engineering |
