🚀 go-pugleaf

I swear this is my final word on this issue! I think I've used up enough of
everyone's time....

I didn't say face-to-face with the instructor, Mitch-- more like what Victor
and Art are talking about. And as to Kevin's question about evaluating students
face to face, yes, I have done so--- in fact in our public speaking course
as it is run here, students do face public evaluation from both teacher and
students, and I have given evaluations that weren't always completely
positive. I don't LIKE doing it, but I think I owe them a straight answer. I
am sounding brutal here, but I do respect my students and I treat them as
tactfully as possible. I also have given face to face evaluations of written
work, in private of course.

I do believe that the students' rights ought to be protected, but it does seem
to me that what frequently gets lost in all of this is an instructor's rights.
At the moment I have a foot in both camps, as a graduate student but also as
a college teacher, and there are reasons for irritation on both sides. While I
think that evaluations can be useful, I think they can be so only in a limited
way and that they have to be supplemented by other views and information, as
Barbara and others have suggested. Of course I recognize that there are petty
and vindictive people who are teachers, at all levels -- but there are also
some petty and vindictive students who aren't really interested in evaluating
a person's *work* but are out for blood. And even if you don't wield the club
of grades, you *can* hurt a person's career, or (if it's a grad student)
her/his financial support. I think those are pretty significant.

Despite the "ethos" I seem to be developing here as a hard-nosed student-
bashing apologist for malcontented faculty, I must say that MOST of my
experiences have affirmed my conviction that my students are generally
decent people who do try to be fair -- like MOST of the faculty I know. But
I guess I have been on both sides of the fence for too long to think that the
fault is all on one side only, that poor victimized students need to be
protected from vindictive faculty. SOMEtimes faculty need to be protected
from vindictive students -- and the numbers produced by evaluations need to
be read with some insight and sensitivity to the complexity of the situation
and recognition of the factors that can produce high or low scores.

As for the final example I gave about the nasty joke -- I had hoped it was
clear, Mitch, that that wasn't meant to be representative. It was simply an
indication of how slavishly some administrative types hold to the numbers,
and how easily the whole process can be subverted.

I have been enjoying this exchange, though. It's good to hear from so many
people on such an (apparently) explosive issue. THanks.
Jen.