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>Thinking someone is an excellent lecturer is not the same as being taught effectively. This a thousand times. Most student evaluations are garbage. >It's not

>Thinking someone is an excellent lecturer is not the same as being taught effectively. This a thousand times. Most student evaluations are garbage. >It's not his job to entertain you. It's his job to make the material available for you to study and assimilate, and to provide insight you would find difficult to gain simply by reading from a text. You falling asleep is your problem, not his. No, but at the same time, we can and should look to optimize the ways in which we deliver material.

vlasev 13y ago
I agree that student evaluations are mostly garbage but they have saved me from bad professors at times. You just have to know what you are looking for. The reason evaluations are bad is that you can't just put a point scale on a professor and hope things will go alright. If you look at ratemyproffessor you'll see a lot of people giving bad rating because tests and homeworks were hard. This is BAD. You'll also see a lot of good ratings because the professor was easy. This is also bad. You want to look at the ratings that talk about the teacher's engagement in the teaching process, not in how difficult their material is. Case in point - I had an amazing Group Theory teacher and the assignments and final were really difficult. You'd expect that some people will not distinguish the two aspects of teaching and slap on a bad rating because it's so difficult. Others will see the difference and give a good rating for teaching and describe the course as difficult.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  I meant the evaluations conducted by the school. The questionnaires are usually terrible, and the students don't know how to answer them. >ratemyprofessor ROFL. If I ever get an overall good rating on ratemyprofessor, I will seriously start to question myself. That thing is a popularity contest. Some of the absolute worst on there have great ratings. Some of the comments might be useful, but that's about it.

vlasev 13y ago

I agree that student evaluations are mostly garbage but they have saved me from bad professors at times. You just have to know what you are looking for. The reason evaluations are bad is that you can't just put a point scale on a professor and hope things will go alright. If you look at ratemyproffessor you'll see a lot of people giving bad rating because tests and homeworks were hard. This is BAD. You'll also see a lot of good ratings because the professor was easy. This is also bad. You want to look at the ratings that talk about the teacher's engagement in the teaching process, not in how difficult their material is. Case in point - I had an amazing Group Theory teacher and the assignments and final were really difficult. You'd expect that some people will not distinguish the two aspects of teaching and slap on a bad rating because it's so difficult. Others will see the difference and give a good rating for teaching and describe the course as difficult.

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
I meant the evaluations conducted by the school. The questionnaires are usually terrible, and the students don't know how to answer them. >ratemyprofessor ROFL. If I ever get an overall good rating on ratemyprofessor, I will seriously start to question myself. That thing is a popularity contest. Some of the absolute worst on there have great ratings. Some of the comments might be useful, but that's about it.