Friday, October 26, 2001

Evaluation forms should be balanced
By Julie Ann Matonis
Skiff Staff

Students are evaluated throughout the semester in the form of tests, papers and presentations. There is one opportunity for us to measure the effectiveness of a professor and their teaching abilities. That opportunity is at the end of a semester through a series of Scantron questions and written comments on a teacher evaluation form.

At a recent House of Student Representatives meeting, Mike Sacken, University Evaluation Committee chairman, proposed a new evaluation form that consists of fewer multiple-choice questions and more space for written comments. Although a form revision is necessary to maximize usefulness, the proposed changes could be less effective for professors and their departments.

Before any beneficial changes can be made to evaluation forms, their purpose must be clearly identified to all parties. Are teacher evaluations handed out to give students an opportunity to voice their opinions? Yes, though our opinions are given only limited consideration.

Tommy Thomason, chairman of the journalism department, said he receives the numerical averages of bubbled-in answers on evaluation forms, but handwritten comments are not forwarded to him. They go only to that specific professor. You’ve heard of the buck stops here? Well, so does the evaluation form.

Professors cannot be expected to take negative comments about their teaching and forward them to their superiors. That is understandable. None of us wants to make ourselves look bad.

Students with serious problems need to direct them to the department chair or dean. That is the proper avenue for pursuing grievances. The teacher evaluation form is not a shortcut to their doors. Still, feedback, positive or negative, is valuable and many professors will use constructive criticism to improve their courses.

But not every professor will do so. The power of tenure makes some professors untouchable to evaluation form comments. The wise professor will still hand out the forms and consider results. Unfortunately, some probably do not. It is not a perfect world, nor a perfect evaluation system. We can probably say the same for some of our grades.

Current forms have 20 to 30 multiple-choice questions. When filling out evaluation forms, many of us will race through the questions and write sparse comments. If a new form asks for primarily written comments, the number of quality student responses will diminish.

Written responses typically sway toward extremes. Either you really liked a professor or you did not. How many of us write “you were a so-so professor?”

Therefore, multiple-choice questions provide the best opportunity for comparison. It’s easier to evaluate a quantitative response than a qualitative one. When you can determine an average competency of 3.5 in a given area, you can conjure up a better picture than from a comment that says, “you confused me daily.”

An abundance of bubble-questions can be distracting though, especially if they seem repetitive. After awhile, you grow impatient, you think you are wasting time on the same questions over and over and by the time you get to the written comment section, you are fed up.

The bottom line, the purpose of the form, is feedback. Without our constructive criticism, professors have no way of gauging student response to their teaching style.

Let’s help refine the existing form while keeping a few things in mind. Written comments are much more specific than filling in a Scantron, but over-reliance on written responses diminishes the comparative edge the evaluation form needs. Too many multiple-choice questions also detracts from the form’s purpose because it produces lazy responses.

If professors want more valuable feedback, the teacher evaluation form should reflect our mindset as we fill out the forms. The mechanism is already there. Let’s tweak it together.

Julie Ann Matonis is a junior broadcast journalism major from San Antonio.
She can be contacted (j.a.matonis@student.tcu.edu).