SG seeks to introduce professor evaluations of students
Ferren does not support the proposal
April 27, 2009
"The form of the evaluation slip will be determined with further consultation among the administration, faculty and the Student Government (SG)," reads the text of the official proposal. "SG proposes the use of an electronic form for grades, which will give professors the chance to evaluate students through a single click on a multiple choice based questions." According to the proposal, this method is preferred as the least time-consuming one. The evaluation form "can be available for the students after the end of the semester in a period of 15 days to [a] month. It can be accessible through the registrar's system or sent automatically via e-mail."
Pagovski said he came up with the idea in consultation with the student body. "I think that a letter grade at the end of the semester is not an accurate indicator of [a] student's performance in class," he added.
"The SG has a task force that is trying to implement this idea" Pagovski said. The task force already discussed the proposalwith Provost Ann Ferren. "She said that for now, it is difficult to accommodate the proposal with the current registration system because there are going to be too many evaluations. However, we [Ferren and the SG task force] agreed that it is very useful to work on improving the student learning [process] and now we are trying to plan something for the end of this semester," he added.
"I do not support the proposal that was sent to me," Ferren said. "It is not workable for faculty to prepare narrative evaluations for all of their students and for the Registrar's Office to distribute them-that would add up to 1000 students times five courses or 5000 reports. Furthermore, an evaluation after the end of the semester is too late for a student to use to improve their learning as the results from one course may not be applicable in the next course," she added.
The proposed solution for this semester, Pagovski said, is for professors to send each student an e-mail with a list of items that compose the final grade as they appear in the syllabus, and to point out how much the student got on each of them, especially on the final exam.
Some of the goals of the proposal, as outlined by the task force, are "defining the students' weaknesses in the course and finding ways for [the] elimination [of the weaknesses]," "encouraging the students to continue with their course of work, if they show good performances," "encouraging the professors for active observation of the students' work," and "promoting better consideration from professors when grading the students."
Dean of Faculty Steve Sullivan said the proposal would require a change in academic policy and needs faculty assembly input. It is "almost too late to implement it for the next academic year," he added. "[This policy would be] making life more difficult for a lot of people in order to solve a problem that affects only a few," he added.
"I don't think faculty members will be happy," Sullivan said. "My gut feeling is, if you have to shove something down their throats against their wishes, it won't work," he added.
"I am against the idea," politics professor Maria Tzankova said. "I don't think it's manageable, I don't think this will improve the quality of teaching at all," she said. "Whenever I've written comments, I've noticed that students don't pay attention to them," she added.
History professor Pierangelo Castagneto said he does not think the evaluations would be difficult to do or wouldn't take too much time." He said evaluations would "help make more clear where a student did wrong or well" and will "lead to a more open discussion about the grade."
"I think it's a good idea," student Mariya Tsvyatkova said. "Most of the time I feel I'm doing well during the semester - I get only As on exams and at the end I get a B [for the course] and I have no idea where it comes from. Is it participation, the final [exam] or the professor's opinion," she added.
Student Denitza Charkova said she considered idea "brilliant, since in this way students can get an accurate assessment of their work during the whole semester, not only before the final exam."
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Comments
sheeeesh
oh, puhleease. this is not going to happen. how diligent are you with your professor evaluations? that's what i thought, and you have incentives to do that. prof's are not gonna be denied their salary or whatever until they fill these out, on the other hand. so, while, say, Bobby would try and do everything properly, that same Naqvi will just ignore the whole thing.
you have a syllabus, with every item's contribution to the final grade spelled out for you. you sign up for a course with a 40% final? whose fault is that now?
plus, you can always return to your professor next semester and discuss your final paper/exam. they're required to keep those for a few years. and thus, the final grade can be re-calculated post factum (there, again, already exists a procedure).
as to the participation rate.... as Frusetta once said, there's participation and there's participation. b.s.-ing your way out rarely works (depending on the prof and department). again, why don't you make sure you're going for an A before the final? maybe, you're only deluding yourself.
P.S. a B is a decent grade, you nerds.