Teaching evaluations for virtual semesters

[nonsensical]

I'm curious whether you all teach at schools that have done normal course evaluations for this past spring and/or summer. If so, how did that go? I can see students being upset about online learning and taking it out on the evaluations, and I can also see students having sympathy for instructors who have to do everything online. If your school made changes to course evaluations for one or both of those semesters, what did they do, and are they continuing to do that same thing this fall? I will be getting course evaluations for the first time for a virtual class this semester and have no idea what kinds of responses to expect.

[fourhats]

Mine made evaluations optional for last semester and this one--the professors get to decide whether or not to require/request them.

[onthefringe]

In spring when we went suddenly online after Spring break, we did normal evaluations, though they included an introductory paragraph reminding students that it had been an unusual semester. in my own evaluations, and in those of people I talked to personally, and when you compare the overall numbers across semesters, it looked like students were incredibly tolerant of anyone who even made a show of trying. Many people report that their evaluations were actually higher than usual.

Evaluations are not back for Fall yet (they are still mandatory and still have the introductory context though), but my personal guess is that they will be significantly worse than usual, since the novelty of teaching and learning remotely under less than optimal circumstances has clearly worn off.

Faculty are allowed to include a "context statement" in their dossiers with their 2020 evaluations for what that's worth.

[Sun_Worshiper]

In spring when we went suddenly online after Spring break, we did normal evaluations, though they included an introductory paragraph reminding students that it had been an unusual semester. in my own evaluations, and in those of people I talked to personally, and when you compare the overall numbers across semesters, it looked like students were incredibly tolerant of anyone who even made a show of trying. Many people report that their evaluations were actually higher than usual.

Evaluations are not back for Fall yet (they are still mandatory and still have the introductory context though), but my personal guess is that they will be significantly worse than usual, since the novelty of teaching and learning remotely under less than optimal circumstances has clearly worn off.

Faculty are allowed to include a "context statement" in their dossiers with their 2020 evaluations for what that's worth.

Same at my place, and I share your spring experience and fall expectation. T&P says they will take evals during this period with a grain of salt, but we'll see.

[Parasaurolophus]

Before, evaluations were only ever administered in-person and on paper, and only at the instructor's request. You had to ask for each of your classes, and the administrator in charge of the entire faculty would come to your class and administer the evaluations, then scan them and send them to you.

Now, they've completely stopped administering evaluations, because they can't figure out how to run them. But evaluations are still required for faculty in the probationary period (like me).


I just run my own course evaluations through Moodle. I ask exactly the same questions as the paper evaluations ask. It's easy. I dunno who it is who can't figure out how to run them, but...

[OneMoreYear]

We had online evals for spring and summer semesters.  The response rate was abysmal.  For one of my summer classes, only 1 student completed the online eval. We are being strongly encouraged by administration to encourage students to complete the evals for Fall. I suspect my evals for Fall might be OK for two classes: 1) new class for the department in any format, which we designed as asynchronous online, so we did not have to translate a face to face class into something new; 2) seminar class that went OK. But, I expect awful evals for: 3) class that everybody hates no matter the format and 4) class that should never ever be taught online. 

[arcturus]

Our student evaluations of teaching were optional in the spring semester, but are required for the fall semester. There are lots of statements from administrators that we should place them in context, if we will be submitting them as part of tenure and promotion materials in the future. However, our evaluations have been online for several years now and are mostly useless since the completion rates are so low (often only 1 or 2 students in the smaller classes; less than 10% in the large enrollment classes). I do not expect this trend to change under the current conditions.

[Cheerful]

Mine made evaluations optional for last semester and this one--the professors get to decide whether or not to require/request them.

Sounds reasonable.  Should be the case for all non-probationary faculty, all the time, pandemic or not.