Oracle Online

Psychology professor Kim Guenther, chair of the Faculty Institutional Relations Committee (FIRC), finds the decreasing compliance troubling. Evaluations provide useful information on professors’ effectiveness, he said.

Evaluations are not currently mandatory, though some students and faculty have suggested either making them so or giving bonus points upon completion. Nothing official has been decided yet, Peschek said.

Making the evaluations mandatory, however, is not the answer to diminishing student participation, Guenther said.

He said he’s reluctant to force students to comply, and he suggested that the university might consider returning to the method of students filling out paper evaluations during the last class.

“Once students leave class, most aren’t interested in thinking back and completing the evaluations online,” Guenther said.

Communications professor Suda Ishida said she was disappointed with the outcome of her class evaluations.

“I don’t like online evaluations because students didn’t do it,” she said. “Less than half of the students in my classes did them.”

Ishida said she looks to the evaluations for feedback on her classes in order to improve her teaching methods.

Lack of interest and energy during finals week was not the main reason sophomore Dan Nelson did not take the time to answer evaluation questions for his fall or J-term classes, he said.

“I feel like it’s a lost cause and my comments aren’t taken into account,” Nelson said. “Professors are not evolving their teaching methods, and they don’t seem open to changing their style.”

Nelson said the old system of paper evaluations were more convenient, but admitted he wouldn’t complete those, either.

The idea that evaluations don’t make a difference is one many students agree on, Peschek said, but he believes that is a misconception.

“We want to reassure students [that] compliance is helpful and comments are taken very seriously,” he said. “Students’ evaluations do make a difference, and they remain in faculty members’ files for future reviews.”

Individual faculty members, along with department chairs and the FPC, all read evaluations. According to Peschek, each evaluation plays a major role in the internal assessments of faculty. Non-tenured faculty members receive annual reviews, while tenured faculty undergo two reviews, one after three and another after six years of instruction. Additionally, every faculty member must submit a faculty information form annually, Peschek said, which is a self-evaluation of each of their classes.
Peschek also stressed that evaluations do remain anonymous.

Sophomore Maureen Barry completed the online evaluations last semester, but she feels that evaluations seem unnecessary for introductory level classes.

“For lower-level classes with professors you don’t know, evaluation questions are too complicated,” she said. “You don’t have anything to base your answers on, especially if it’s a subject you’ve never had before.”

Faculty and staff hope for higher participation with online evaluations this May.

“We’re talking with students and faculty for ideas on how to better the evaluation system. But for now, the plan is to continue with the online evaluations this spring,” Peschek said.