I start today with a minor rant: one of the primary ways that instructor ability is judged in the profession of being a professor is through review of course evaluations. The problem with that should be obvious, but most people don’t seem to talk about it. Those course evaluations are extremely biased, as students see it as their one opportunity to comment on the course as a critic. Some are glowing. Some nitpick. But the most vocal students, nine times out of ten, are the ones who are failing. And odds are they are failing because they either didn’t or wouldn’t follow directions, so taking their words on a form they might not even be paying close attention to as an indicator of instructor quality is a fool’s errand. Still– people do it. I once had a review with a superior where in spite of me having glowing evals other than one single angst ridden student, I was told I could do better. I shouldn’t have made that student feel the way that student felt.
That student, I believe from the context of the comments, is one who told me to “go fuck myself” and stomped out of my class when I told him he couldn’t use the n word to describe President Obama in my classroom.
This is me caring how that student felt about my teaching.
I administer my own targeted course evaluation measures at midterm and when classes end. I know there’s a chance students are biased, but my experience with students is that most of them want to give feedback they think will make a class better. So if you can learn to filter out the ones who are kissing up, and you can filter out the people who are mad because they got a C or D on a project, the bulk of what is said is useful. I’m always tweaking my classes over constructive feedback.
But he major course evals offer a different form of feedback for me. The praise is nice (I get quite a bit of it– either I’m good at my job or I inspire people to tell me that I am), but the things people criticize often give me a sense of how well my class is actually working. Below are four things students have said on evals in the last few years:
- “He made us think too hard about things that weren’t that complicated.” I consider this the highest compliment someone can give to a person who tries to teach issues of race, gender, sexuality and class in games and visual culture. My greatest aspiration is to make people think too hard about things they, previous to encountering me, might have neglected to consider.
- “I wasn’t always sure what I should be doing, and the class wasn’t clear.” I know that should make me feel bad, but here’s the sticky wicket: I know my courses and instructions/assignment sheets are clear. I teach other people exactly how to make things precise and detailed for a living. So why is this comment useful, you might ask. It shows me that people aren’t using all the tools I put in front of them. I teach a six week summer course. It is impossible to get lost in this course if you follow all the directions. Tasks are explained in detail each day, all the resources are linked, there are reminders peppered everywhere. But if you don’t pay attention– you’ll miss all that and fail. So if a person tells me they couldn’t figure it out, I can take that as a strong indicator that I need to think about my avenues in, about ways to raise awareness. Or it sometimes explains to me why some people fail the class for not completing work when they log in every single day. It’s useful to know, even if it’s not useful as a directive to change.
- “I couldn’t understand how I was being graded.” This one is something I think every instructor sees, but it makes me chuckle because it says on my syllabus, on each grade rubric, in every email about grades, in my announcements, etc. that anyone who wants more information about a grade can email me, ask for an appointment, or find me in online chat. So again, what does a comment like that teach me about teaching? It indicates to me what sorts of directives don’t work. A student saying this about my class would have to have either been afraid of me or only interested enough in more information to ask for it on the course eval (instead of asking me). But I do keep tweaking when I see this comment, trying to make certain that people know what is going on.
- “Sometimes classes seemed disorganized.” This is the one that makes me most proud. I’m a big believer in allowing the class to be what the students make of it. I have a plan, each class, and I make sure that students get the things I want them to get. But during activities, during conversations, etc. I let things organically go where they’ll go. I was once criticized strongly over this while I was a grad student, with a ready-to-retire mentor telling me I was letting my class walk all over me. I wasn’t. And I’m not. But as I see it, there are only really two ways to have a class interaction (lots of shades of gray, but you have to lean one way or the other), either the instructor has an exact plan and forces it or the instructor gives it up to the class and facilitates/turns away from cliffs. I don’t believe that my job is to dictate how my students learn. I always have a plan of where to point them, but I feel just fine letting them create their own paths/learn their own ways. This looks chaotic sometimes because life is chaotic. It’s not like high school. I love that students see that.
The last comment here gets to the point I wanted to make today.
I’ve taught for 17 years now. Every class I’ve taught has been more project than exam based (though many have both), and I’ve managed to go 17 years with only a handful of plagiarism cases. The reason for this is actually super-easy, but sometimes other teachers look at me really weird.
I build classes like this:
- Learning goals
- Major assignments
- Weekly recurring assignments (usually some form of writing)
- Readings and small activities– for about a month
from there, I let the class dictate where we’re going. I have a whole class built when we start, but I don’t commit to it by giving it all to the students. I portion out the schedule so that I can modify, so that we can go, organically, where we’re going. And no two classes go to exactly the same place, so I rarely have the exact same assignments.
I also rework my major assignments in one small but significant way each time. That means that if you know someone who took my class last semester, their project won’t fulfill the criteria for this semester’s submission.
I just let my classes be organic, living things. I make sure we go to all the key places we need to go, that we learn what the class is meant to teach, but I’m not obsessed with how we get there.
I know that runs counter to what a number of people do. I know that many programs are built on classes that come in a box, essentially. And I have those for short terms (like my 3 week winter classes). I get that. And I have made those to give to new teachers, as models.
But I would suggest that if you’ve been teaching for a while and you’re just repeating the same course over and over, you’re doing it wrong. You’re not getting the most from yourself, and if you think your students are getting the most from the experience, you’re probably kidding yourself.
Teaching isn’t a dictatorship.