Look at the graphic Slate put with my evaluation story–which they made the cover today, whee!
The story has been #2 all day–DAMN YOU PRUDENCE*!–and as with PowerPointless, I didn’t even have to piss off thousands of people to write something popular. What a relief.
Anyway, is this not hilarious? My students don’t look at me like this–all right, a few have now and then, fine–but it should look familiar!
*UPDATE! Check it out! I’m #1, ever so briefly! I’ve vanquished you this time, Prudence (OMG totally kidding, I have been reading Prudie religiously since my age started with a mid-2!).
Update #2! Ever so briefly-er, I was Double #1, which hasn’t happened since the Essay Essay. Huzzah!!!
Loved the story. I didn’t want to post my worst eval comment on your FB site with my name on it, but it was “if I ever found out I had just 3 hours to live, I hope it would be in this class because it would last forever.” This was a class where students were unwilling to engage with my carefully crafted small group discussion questions and activities, so I reverted to too much lecture.
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Wow, it’s like the reverse-FAUST :).
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Many administrators were once professors, are intelligent and necessary. It’s insulting to generalize that they strictly care about money. A successful institution requires everyone working together to create the best possible educational experience for students. Perhaps we should evaluate that.
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WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE POOR ADMINISTRATORS?!?!?!? THEY MAKE SO LITTLE MONEY AND THEIR JOBS ARE SO PRECARIOUS oh wait no.
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I’ve been thinking about your evaluation story a lot. It’s a good story, people are filling out evaluations on me right nowish; moreover, if I wasn’t doing popular writing, blogging, tweeting, I’d be grading. I choose not to be grading.
There need to be ways in which students can provide protected feedback to and on professors. I don’t know if signing it does the trick, but it might.
I’ve been reading some defenses of the evaluations – mostly from tenured profs, most but not all white male – people who by definition have made it through the job market lottery to at least a tenure-track job. What I have yet to hear is why the positives of the eval systems, such as they are, outweigh the demonstrable inequities, biases, stupidities, and other problems you point out. I don’t expect to hear such an argument, as I don’t think there is one.
My question is how to persuade folks of that in this age of mandatory assessment.
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Every single defender of evals to me has been white; 99% of them have been male, 100% have been in permanent employ. Hmmm.
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Yeah. I’m a straight white male with tenure who has had good evaluations. I’m trying to figure out how to persuade other mes to fix/destroy/eat the system.
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Why destroy a system that has treated them so well? The rest of us? Well, there’s something wrong with us, obviously.
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