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Sure, evalutations are flawed, but it appears that universities are unable or unwilling to develop other quality measures. For example, this semester I've had

Sure, evalutations are flawed, but it appears that universities are unable or unwilling to develop other quality measures. For example, this semester I've had a networking professor that would get half way into explaining something interesting and then state that he didn't care about the topic so he didn't prepare to talk about it and we'd be moving on to something else. I've got an A in that class, but I wouldn't say that I learned much from it due to that attitude. I don't think that the CS department here has any way to tell that something like that is happening without evaluations.

bane 8y ago
Right. I think anybody reading comments in these review sites can see if students are ranking professors well for being "easy" or if they're ranking them well for being great educators. The universities I went to for my undergrad and graduate programs both had an informal rating system for professors and I definitely encountered some of both. One of the most highly rated professors I encountered was also one of the best educators at the school. He had a reputation as being a brutally hard grader. But most of the students who left his classes with some bruises and (what would have been in any other class) a mediocre grade, ached to take more from him because you felt the immense value of his teaching. I had other professors who taught poorly, tolerated cheating, or gave non-sequitur exams on material they never covered and so on. There was absolutely no recourse or way of providing feedback on these professors and even ones who received universally poor reviews at the end of the semester stayed on and even attained tenure in some cases. The only real recourse was for students to rank professors amongst themselves and simply starve out poor professors with lack of registrations. That's the only signal universities seem to respond to.
- chuckgreenman 8y ago
  I got the impression that the author was talking about department run evaluation sheets rather than review sites. Student evaluations shouldn't be seen as an evaluation metric but a smoke detector that indicates a staff member might need some more direction. Teaching is an art, just because someone isn't doing it well doesn't mean they can't do it well. In fact in some cases I imagine they are doing poorly because they would rather be working on their research area. Providing the opportunity to course correct rather than starve out is good.
Klover 8y ago
Do you have student-staff meetings? It seems some schools do that, and others have never thought of it. Basically the idea is that a representative of a group of students comes together with other such representatives and school staff (I don’t know the English words, basically the managers of a school) and discusses the good and the bad of what’s going on. I have heard some positive experiences with this method. If you’re not doing these things, perhaps pitch it to people. Or poll other students and ask someone at the school for an appointment.

bane 8y ago

Right. I think anybody reading comments in these review sites can see if students are ranking professors well for being "easy" or if they're ranking them well for being great educators. The universities I went to for my undergrad and graduate programs both had an informal rating system for professors and I definitely encountered some of both. One of the most highly rated professors I encountered was also one of the best educators at the school. He had a reputation as being a brutally hard grader. But most of the students who left his classes with some bruises and (what would have been in any other class) a mediocre grade, ached to take more from him because you felt the immense value of his teaching. I had other professors who taught poorly, tolerated cheating, or gave non-sequitur exams on material they never covered and so on. There was absolutely no recourse or way of providing feedback on these professors and even ones who received universally poor reviews at the end of the semester stayed on and even attained tenure in some cases. The only real recourse was for students to rank professors amongst themselves and simply starve out poor professors with lack of registrations. That's the only signal universities seem to respond to.

chuckgreenman 8y ago
I got the impression that the author was talking about department run evaluation sheets rather than review sites. Student evaluations shouldn't be seen as an evaluation metric but a smoke detector that indicates a staff member might need some more direction. Teaching is an art, just because someone isn't doing it well doesn't mean they can't do it well. In fact in some cases I imagine they are doing poorly because they would rather be working on their research area. Providing the opportunity to course correct rather than starve out is good.

Klover 8y ago

Do you have student-staff meetings? It seems some schools do that, and others have never thought of it. Basically the idea is that a representative of a group of students comes together with other such representatives and school staff (I don’t know the English words, basically the managers of a school) and discusses the good and the bad of what’s going on. I have heard some positive experiences with this method. If you’re not doing these things, perhaps pitch it to people. Or poll other students and ask someone at the school for an appointment.