Topic: Bang Your Head on Your Desk - the thread of teaching despair!

[marshwiggle]

The problem I run into with dropping the lowest score is I see too many students blow though the freebie in the first week or two of class. They can't seem to grasp that planning as if you are NOT going to have zero is a better approach.

This is why I typically don't mention that the lowest score will be dropped until somebody comes to me having missed one for some reason. That way they don't realize they HAVE a freebie until they've burned it.
(If they looked closely at the grade calculations, they'd see it, but most aren't remotely interested in doing that.)

[Puget]

I'm on my School's promotion and tenure committee and am currently reviewing a dossier. At my institution, student evals and comments are included in the dossier. Here's a direct quote:

"This course is challenging because all the assignments are created by him so there are less resources for help online. I have to talk to him and my peers to get help. This is challenging."

In other words, because your engineering professor writes all his own problems, it makes it harder to cheat by finding the answers on Chegg or elsewhere online... perhaps that's WHY he writes his own problems. A lot of us do. We know you cheat and will work harder at avoiding work, than you would actually doing the work.

Ha! I love it when they don't realize teaching decisions are a feature not a bug.  My favorite was a student who commented that although they agreed the flipped format helped them learn more, it was only because it forced them to do all the weekly work, so that made it a bad format.

[kaysixteen]

So why exactly is it that student evals are considered in a professor's promotion dossier?

[the_geneticist]

I'm on my School's promotion and tenure committee and am currently reviewing a dossier. At my institution, student evals and comments are included in the dossier. Here's a direct quote:

"This course is challenging because all the assignments are created by him so there are less resources for help online. I have to talk to him and my peers to get help. This is challenging."

In other words, because your engineering professor writes all his own problems, it makes it harder to cheat by finding the answers on Chegg or elsewhere online... perhaps that's WHY he writes his own problems. A lot of us do. We know you cheat and will work harder at avoiding work, than you would actually doing the work.

Ha! I love it when they don't realize teaching decisions are a feature not a bug.  My favorite was a student who commented that although they agreed the flipped format helped them learn more, it was only because it forced them to do all the weekly work, so that made it a bad format.

Ha!  Give both of those instructors a promotion! 
Writing your own materials and using a flipped format take a lot more planning and work.  Plus, they are proven to support better learning gains in students.  What's hard is being the only one who does that.  Most students *like* lectures - it's familiar & easy and if you didn't prepare for class, then no one will notice.  And if the instructor posts recordings of the lecture, then you don't even need to be there!
It's a slog here trying to convince folks that posting videos + no in-class activities/points = students will skip class.  And they will do poorly.

[EdnaMode]

So why exactly is it that student evals are considered in a professor's promotion dossier?

It's just the way things are done here. I am also an external reviewer for two other institutions and both have student evals in the dossiers. So it seems, with an insignificant n of 3, at least moderately common.

[the_geneticist]

So why exactly is it that student evals are considered in a professor's promotion dossier?

Honestly, most places include them because "we've always done it".  We know they are flawed & biased, but do it anyway.

My department is at least trying to use questions that are informative rather than ones like "Professor speaks clearly & is easy to understand" or "I wanted to take this class".

Good questions are things like "Learning goals & expectations were shared with students", "assigned material aligned with course goals".

[ciao_yall]

I'm on my School's promotion and tenure committee and am currently reviewing a dossier. At my institution, student evals and comments are included in the dossier. Here's a direct quote:

"This course is challenging because all the assignments are created by him so there are less resources for help online. I have to talk to him and my peers to get help. This is challenging."

In other words, because your engineering professor writes all his own problems, it makes it harder to cheat by finding the answers on Chegg or elsewhere online... perhaps that's WHY he writes his own problems. A lot of us do. We know you cheat and will work harder at avoiding work, than you would actually doing the work.

Ha! I love it when they don't realize teaching decisions are a feature not a bug.  My favorite was a student who commented that although they agreed the flipped format helped them learn more, it was only because it forced them to do all the weekly work, so that made it a bad format.

Ha!  Give both of those instructors a promotion! 
Writing your own materials and using a flipped format take a lot more planning and work.  Plus, they are proven to support better learning gains in students.  What's hard is being the only one who does that.  Most students *like* lectures - it's familiar & easy and if you didn't prepare for class, then no one will notice.  And if the instructor posts recordings of the lecture, then you don't even need to be there!
It's a slog here trying to convince folks that posting videos + no in-class activities/points = students will skip class.  And they will do poorly.

I had a student complain because I don't take off points for absences, because, frankly, they are adults and they don't need my permission.

So he skipped class on some key days, and then got a C on his paper because he  did not bother to make sure he understood the assignment.

So, it was my fault for not forcing him to come to class.

[fosca]

I had a student complain because I don't take off points for absences, because, frankly, they are adults and they don't need my permission.

So he skipped class on some key days, and then got a C on his paper because he  did not bother to make sure he understood the assignment.

So, it was my fault for not forcing him to come to class.

That's right up there with the student who came to office hours to yell at me that I explained things so well that he didn't bother to take notes and thus I caused him to do poorly in the class.  He was loud enough that after he left a couple of fellow grad students stuck their heads out of their offices and asked "Is that what it sounded like?" "Did he really yell at you for being a good teacher?"  Yup.

[kaysixteen]

I understand the rationale for the use of student evals in professor promotion, esp the old saw 'we've always done it that way' (academia, esp grad depts, are real good at that manner of thinking), but how do those senior professors charged with reading these evals and, well, evaluating them for utility, accuracy, legitimacy, etc., go about this task?

[EdnaMode]

I understand the rationale for the use of student evals in professor promotion, esp the old saw 'we've always done it that way' (academia, esp grad depts, are real good at that manner of thinking), but how do those senior professors charged with reading these evals and, well, evaluating them for utility, accuracy, legitimacy, etc., go about this task?

I can't speak for anyone else, and I'm not a fan of student evals in any form, for the reasons many/most of us agree that they are not particularly useful. But, as far as how we treat them at my institution, they're just a small part of the dossier. I look for trends like are there consistent comments about not grading things in a timely fashion, or cancelling class regularly, or not being available for office hours, etc. I ignore things like 'the class is too hard,' or the professor is 'mean' or 'unfair,' or even 'the professor is awesome,' because those aren't relevant to how the class is taught and its outcomes.

Our evals are flawed like all others, but they do ask questions about the course outcomes, expectations, communication, etc. so some useful info can be gained. And this info is taken into consideration with other things like a peer review, the evaluation from the dept chair, dean's letter, and external reviews.

[kaysixteen]

Thank you kindly.  Sure, the sorts of 'he cancels class often' comments are useful, but these sorts of useful things that you mention, are these deficiencies not likely to have already come to the dept chair's attention long before the evals get read, and if not, why not?

[Puget]

I'm on my School's promotion and tenure committee and am currently reviewing a dossier. At my institution, student evals and comments are included in the dossier. Here's a direct quote:

"This course is challenging because all the assignments are created by him so there are less resources for help online. I have to talk to him and my peers to get help. This is challenging."

In other words, because your engineering professor writes all his own problems, it makes it harder to cheat by finding the answers on Chegg or elsewhere online... perhaps that's WHY he writes his own problems. A lot of us do. We know you cheat and will work harder at avoiding work, than you would actually doing the work.

Ha! I love it when they don't realize teaching decisions are a feature not a bug.  My favorite was a student who commented that although they agreed the flipped format helped them learn more, it was only because it forced them to do all the weekly work, so that made it a bad format.

Ha!  Give both of those instructors a promotion! 
Writing your own materials and using a flipped format take a lot more planning and work.  Plus, they are proven to support better learning gains in students.  What's hard is being the only one who does that.  Most students *like* lectures - it's familiar & easy and if you didn't prepare for class, then no one will notice.  And if the instructor posts recordings of the lecture, then you don't even need to be there!
It's a slog here trying to convince folks that posting videos + no in-class activities/points = students will skip class.  And they will do poorly.

I know, this was from my own teaching evals, and I did get tenure, so I guess it didn't hurt ;-)

Overall students have responded really well to the flipped class, but there are always about a quarter of them that really want to be able to sit passively in class and listen to a lecture and resent being made to think, talk and write in class (even though the in class assignments get full credit just for honest effort).

It certainly has improved attendance, since the in class assignments are 15% of the grade and they can only make them up if they're sick or have another excused absence and have to do so in TA office hours which is actually  *harder* than just coming to class in the first place (so I don't have to police excuses too much).

[darkstarrynight]

A graduate student submitted a comment instead of the assignment, earned a zero, then wrote me a nasty email saying hu wanted me to give them another chance to resubmit because they did not know a submission was required. This is the third class the student has taken with me, and I think at this point in a graduate program they should know assignments require actual work. I responded that they could have asked me questions any time since the semester began before this was due in the eighth week and open the entire time. The student responded defensively that they did not have confusion about the assignment and I am not giving them the credit they deserve for their effort (!?!?) Ok...

[EdnaMode]

Thank you kindly.  Sure, the sorts of 'he cancels class often' comments are useful, but these sorts of useful things that you mention, are these deficiencies not likely to have already come to the dept chair's attention long before the evals get read, and if not, why not?

Perhaps because the dept chair is not the only one to make the tenure decision. And on that note, I think we should stop from further derailing this thread. Thanks.

[the_geneticist]

A graduate student submitted a comment instead of the assignment, earned a zero, then wrote me a nasty email saying hu wanted me to give them another chance to resubmit because they did not know a submission was required. This is the third class the student has taken with me, and I think at this point in a graduate program they should know assignments require actual work. I responded that they could have asked me questions any time since the semester began before this was due in the eighth week and open the entire time. The student responded defensively that they did not have confusion about the assignment and I am not giving them the credit they deserve for their effort (!?!?) Ok...

"Credit for effort"?  I think a 0 is exactly how much effort they put in.
Do they need a reminder that anything below a B = failure in graduate level classes?