Apparently yesterday was evaluation day for all of my courses at UW this term. We get to fill in a sheet of paper for each class, rating the instructor and the course on various criteria. Most of it is multiple choice (so we don’t have to think too hard 
) with a few short answers. These evaluations are supposed to be feedback for the staff to improve the course in future offerings.
That’s nice. My question is, does it really matter? How much consideration is even given to those forms? Is there even a third party inspecting them and taking proper action? After all, those evaluations could easily be a facade, an illusion to make us think that our opinions matter.
Sure, there are many good (nay, even great) instructors at UW who strive to improve themselves and their course offerings. On the flip side of the coin, there are those who seemingly couldn’t care less about the class (perhaps they were forced to teach a topic they disliked or something). Now, I won’t question their intelligence; they’re obviously insanely smart to get where they are. It’s just that there are people who are better suited at imparting knowledge upon others.
At TED2009 last February, Bill Gates spoke about education (and malaria, but that’s out of the scope of this post ). While I believe his focus was on primary and secondary education, several of the points he made are still relevant at the college and university level. What kind of process do lecturers undergo to improve their teaching? How are they rewarded for doing well?
Gates mentioned how video can improve quality of education as a whole. It can be used as a feedback mechanism and gives students another resource to learn / study from; an example of this is the OpenCourseWare project at MIT. Funny that technology use at UW seems to be sorely lacking given its reputation in the area. I mean, only recently was video recording equipment added to classrooms (and only a few). Even my high school in a rather small town made use of that particular piece of technology before UW did. Blah.
I figure, given the recent referendums on a new student complex, a health services building and the reinstatement of a radio service fee, we should have one on installing new equipment in existing classrooms. Something like that might actually have a measurable impact on student performance. Heck, it might even get people involved in some decision-making process – kind of important given the amount of student apathy in recent years.
I probably deviated from what I wanted to rant about, but whatever… Something to think about at least.
Tags: Education
completely off topic but NERD RAGE!!!!!!
as far as my UNSW goes, they do seemingly take the feedbacks seriously. I know this because i had to repeat a few courses (fail lol) and they were drastically different each time i do it (what? you did it more than twice? EPIC FAIL!!!) yes i know, i dont deserve to be a nerd, next.
oh, there is no next, lol (the fail continues for poor dacelo…)
Huh, if the course are drastically different each time you take them, isn’t that bad? I mean, if the course was well-designed in the first place there shouldn’t be any foundational shifts in material.
Of course, we have to take into account instructor teaching styles (some might prefer certain course topics over others). Take my psychology prof. as an example: he stated he would much rather cover social psychology for most of the term on Tuesday.