I felt as nervous to start reading my 228 student evaluations as I did walking into the first day of class hugging a gigantic cardboard box full of candy. I know, I know, evaluation is what I need and want, and even asked for (with participation points as an encouragement), but it still made me queasy, and I put it off for days.
The reason I was so nervous was that I had heard, over and over again, that students are often hostile towards active learning classes, particularly when there is no opportunity to pre-emptively explore the method-behind-the-madness and encourage student buy-in. Buy-in is not only desirable for your ego (and evaluation scores), but necessary for the students' successful engagement with the techniques. Unfortunately, the most time-efficient method of encouraging buy-in, which is the PR approach of simply stating that the methods you use are the greatest ever and proven by scientists in white coats, is likely to be the least effective way of converting your students to enthusiastic active learners. For the approved, student-centred exemplar, check out this article from the otherwise subscription-only National Teaching and Learning Forum.
Anyway, as excited as I am by that idea, in practice I only had 10 minutes in my four-class module dedicated to 'encouraging buy-in'. I spent 99% of that time trying to explain as clearly as possible how the structure of my module would differ from the rest of the course, what was expected of them and how to use the learning objectives. Not that many of them believed me (more on that in my next post). So no buy-in was achieved. Hence my nervousness at their reactions to my module. Many students liked me, or liked my methods, or liked the class or the examples or the objectives or this, that, or the other, but by far the most common response was :
1) The method was 'inefficient'.
That is, we didn't cover enough.
2) Depending on the student complaining, being called on to report out was either intimidating or 'pointless'.
In explanation, my method to make sure that people actually engaged in the activities (since no marks were available) was to call on people at random to report out the results of their group discussions. In passing, several students made it clear in their evaluations that this had worked, by stating that they wouldn't have bothered doing any of the activities if not for the fear of being called out. But they overwhelmingly hated the idea.
3) Group work and discussion based learning was inappropriate for such a big class.
Anyway, as excited as I am by that idea, in practice I only had 10 minutes in my four-class module dedicated to 'encouraging buy-in'. I spent 99% of that time trying to explain as clearly as possible how the structure of my module would differ from the rest of the course, what was expected of them and how to use the learning objectives. Not that many of them believed me (more on that in my next post). So no buy-in was achieved. Hence my nervousness at their reactions to my module. Many students liked me, or liked my methods, or liked the class or the examples or the objectives or this, that, or the other, but by far the most common response was :
1) The method was 'inefficient'.
That is, we didn't cover enough.
2) Depending on the student complaining, being called on to report out was either intimidating or 'pointless'.
In explanation, my method to make sure that people actually engaged in the activities (since no marks were available) was to call on people at random to report out the results of their group discussions. In passing, several students made it clear in their evaluations that this had worked, by stating that they wouldn't have bothered doing any of the activities if not for the fear of being called out. But they overwhelmingly hated the idea.
3) Group work and discussion based learning was inappropriate for such a big class.
How I dealt with my bad student evaluations.
The most obvious method for dealing with bad evaluations is not to get them. To try the buy-in activities. To be organised and make sure the students know what to expect. To accept that much of the criticism might be valid and look for ways to improve your work. But the reality is that bad student evaluations could persist anyway. And that can really, really matter for a tertiary teaching career. Rightly or wrongly (please read this eloquent diatribe for the 'wrongly' argument) student evaluations are often the information that employers use to assess your effectiveness as a teacher. The answer that our FIRST IV mentors have given us is (to paraphrase) SHOW THEM THE DATA. Make sure that you collect good data on learning gains in your classes. Be able to demonstrate that your students are meeting their learning objectives, even if they whine that group work is annoying.
The most obvious method for dealing with bad evaluations is not to get them. To try the buy-in activities. To be organised and make sure the students know what to expect. To accept that much of the criticism might be valid and look for ways to improve your work. But the reality is that bad student evaluations could persist anyway. And that can really, really matter for a tertiary teaching career. Rightly or wrongly (please read this eloquent diatribe for the 'wrongly' argument) student evaluations are often the information that employers use to assess your effectiveness as a teacher. The answer that our FIRST IV mentors have given us is (to paraphrase) SHOW THEM THE DATA. Make sure that you collect good data on learning gains in your classes. Be able to demonstrate that your students are meeting their learning objectives, even if they whine that group work is annoying.
On this note, I'd like to explain how I regained my cheeriness after reading hundreds of student evaluations complaining about the inefficiency of my methods. I read their post-instruction 'dinosaur essays'.
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