Schools should ask students to evaluate their teachers. Do you agree or disagree?
The evaluation of the teachers is always a nightmare for me. I have to face to dozens of vague questions, such as 'what do you think of the instructor?' or 'How is the course?' Neither were the standards provided, nor explanation can be found. The options are even more confused - I totally have no idea what the difference between 'very good' and 'excellent'. The only thing I could do is turn to the student around me for a help. But the feedback brought nothing but shock to me. The result of the option which I was hesitating whether chose 'very good' or 'excellent' appeared 'bad' on the evaluation sheet of the girl's! She complained that the assignments were too hazardous to her, and she hoped that the administrators of the college would urge the professor to lessen the difficulty of this curriculum. 'I don't care about the content of this course, I just need an 'A' to benefit my grading,' she claimed.
How can this kind of evaluation be used to judge the lecturers? I kept thinking about this question. Because of its unscientific method of data gathering, it seems that no one was really benefited from these meaningless sheets.
There is no doubt that the teachers were unfairly treated through this kind of measuring. Each student has his/her own standard, and no one can guarantee they are all reasonable. Besides, no instructions were provided to guide the youth to be unbiased. The only result of this evaluation was the teachers' efforts are completely neglected and their tiny mistakes are incredibly magnified. This can be seen form the girl’s judgment: the interesting explanation and the abundant case study which fascinated me were all ignored; instead, the difficult homework covered all the virtues of his lecture.
Neither can the students get a profit form it. The only thing that they will learn from this activity is the teachers should cater to them, or they will give bad remarks to hurt the instructors' reputation. I believe the girl must felt quit pleasant that she can drive the professor into somewhat embarrassed situation, and force him to arrange the course as her wish. Of course, the managers of the college will obtain the artificial images of the teaching condition, and thus they can not estimate the value of their staff precisely. I can still remember the irony feedback of the evaluation I mentioned above. Two weeks after the day which nearly drove me mad, the professor was criticized by the dean, but not punished. The reason was the result of the evaluation showed that the midterm examination was too difficult and had not reflected what was taught in the class, but, in fact, the test would be held on the next week. |