I have been away for a long time. One of the reasons—though certainly not the only one—is that I taught a January-term course this year. In addition to the hectic teaching schedule, I prepared the class in South America, which proved challenging. What spurs me to write at the moment is the fact that I received my teaching evaluations the other morning and have been thinking about them ever since.
First I’ll say that of a class of twenty, only four bothered to fill them out. Instead of paper evals all the students fill out on the last day of class (where you can bribe them with food and the promise of early dismissal, as well as make a speech about how great they’ve been), the students have to go online during their own time and fill them out. When only four of twenty do them, the proportion of extreme responses goes up. One of the evaluations was outstanding and one was atrocious, I’m pretty certain the worst I ever received. The other two were pretty good. In addition to the number ranking, the students have the opportunity to write comments, which the angry evaluator took every opportunity to do.
That’s about all I want to say about them. I introduce them mostly as an explanation for why my thoughts have gone in the direction they have.
