Student evaluation form

[spork]

Why not run your own evaluations of the courses that you teach? Do it twice: mid-semester and end of semester. Use the mid-semester feedback to address aspects of the course and your teaching that students are having problems with. It is very easy to create anonymous online surveys with free tools like Google Forms, Doodle, SurveyMonkey, etc. You'll have data that you can use for improving your teaching and for job applications.

[polly_mer]

Focus on the big picture: getting a different job elsewhere and likely not in academia.

You can't get a good academic job that absolutely, positively requires formal classroom evaluations with a homemade anything.  They are looking for specific types of comments, which do vary by school, but you won't have those kinds of evaluations.  As someone mentioned upthread, search committees want to see your ratings relative to the department/school/university.

From all you've written regarding this place, you don't want the kind of job that would be open to the realistic student evaluations that you likely would get from these students because it will be the same kind of job with the same kind of student.

You've mentioned being misplaced as a fabulous researcher who is trying to teach people who don't want to be taught.  There's no way that experience teaching at this kind of school is helping polish that research CV that is getting staler by the second.  Working your network to get some sort of soft money position for a couple years from which you can spend a couple years writing proposals and publishing will yield better results.  If no one is willing to even let you co-PI a proposal from which to fund yourself, then that's your answer that the door to academia is closed to you.

How's that non-academic job search going?

[mahagonny]

Focus on the big picture: getting a different job elsewhere and likely not in academia.

You can't get a good academic job that absolutely, positively requires formal classroom evaluations with a homemade anything.  They are looking for specific types of comments, which do vary by school, but you won't have those kinds of evaluations.  As someone mentioned upthread, search committees want to see your ratings relative to the department/school/university.

From all you've written regarding this place, you don't want the kind of job that would be open to the realistic student evaluations that you likely would get from these students because it will be the same kind of job with the same kind of student.

You've mentioned being misplaced as a fabulous researcher who is trying to teach people who don't want to be taught.  There's no way that experience teaching at this kind of school is helping polish that research CV that is getting staler by the second.  Working your network to get some sort of soft money position for a couple years from which you can spend a couple years writing proposals and publishing will yield better results.  If no one is willing to even let you co-PI a proposal from which to fund yourself, then that's your answer that the door to academia is closed to you.

How's that non-academic job search going?

You sound like you are scolding Hamburger. Yet these complaints about about someone having to teach students who aren't really prepared for college level work, or are less than interested, are pretty identical to what you've been posting lately. Just saying.

It looks like you're being validated, Polly. Or does someone with your temerity not need that.

[mythbuster]

 You can have the students fill out the forms on the last day of class. Designate one student to collect them and deliver them to the department secretary or some other university person that is not you. Then tell the students and the person who collects them not to give them back to you until after finals grades post.
   Also you should leave the room while students fill out the survey. This eliminates possible pressuring of the students. This is how were used to do student evals in the days of them being pencil and paper.
    You also could set up an online anonymous survey, if you have access to appropriate software.
   

[Hegemony]

What Mythbuster says.  The issue is not that the fill them out before you turn in the grades.  The issue is when you have access to them.

[Parasaurolophus]

Thus, even they rate me rubbish in the survey, I cannot lower their grades or else they will complain about me.

You should never, ever do this. Nor should students ever be under the impression that you might.

[spork]

[
[. . .]

You sound like you are scolding Hamburger.

[. . . ]

If reality sounds like scolding to you, so be it. I've made essentially the same statement on several of the other threads that he has started, such as:

As I responded to the OP on the old CHE fora, find a job in another industry if your academic temp work isn't meeting your needs.

[Ruralguy]

OP can correct me if I am wrong, but the general idea is:

If I have all the old monikers and old posts right,  the OP had some trouble in an overseas job (I think non-tenured) after having had to relocate from home country and some successes.  Then I believe he came to north America, and was in just the sort of situation Polly described: on the way to soft money, and essentially volunteering in someone's lab. Some conflict there led to no soft money, so no job.
Then, the present job with uninterested students. So, there's now been I think about 5 years of drama in several venues.

So, though I wouldn't scold, I would agree that the cycle with the current job is probably over. It would only lead to a better job, OP, if you really want to be with that kind of student (or close) and resolve to figure out how to adapt. Otherwise, forget it, or be miserable going from gig to gig.

As for Polly_mer herself, I think she last was in a teaching position several years ago, and her references to such are pretty much past tense (unless something changed or I got it wrong). When she suggests folks look for good non-academic jobs, she's more or less having people follow the path she took after she noticed that her students mostly didn't want to learn, and she was putting inordinate amounts of time on teaching to this type of student, and it was highly frustrating, especially considering the probable fate of the school (is it still circling the drain, Polly?).

[hamburger]

You can have the students fill out the forms on the last day of class. Designate one student to collect them and deliver them to the department secretary or some other university person that is not you. Then tell the students and the person who collects them not to give them back to you until after finals grades post.
   Also you should leave the room while students fill out the survey. This eliminates possible pressuring of the students. This is how were used to do student evals in the days of them being pencil and paper.
    You also could set up an online anonymous survey, if you have access to appropriate software.

My "temporary" mailbox is out of reach from students. Department Head also does not want secretary to forward things from students to professors! She prefers some kind of dropin box but that kind of box does not exist despite she has been talking about it for the whole semester.

In the past, the Dean mentioned that I should have received student evaluations at the end of each semester. Yet, my department does not give it to me for the previous semesters I taught here. It is because they don't want people to use it to find a job somewhere else and remain to be disposable part-timers?

[polly_mer]

As for Polly_mer herself, I think she last was in a teaching position several years ago, and her references to such are pretty much past tense (unless something changed or I got it wrong). When she suggests folks look for good non-academic jobs, she's more or less having people follow the path she took after she noticed that her students mostly didn't want to learn, and she was putting inordinate amounts of time on teaching to this type of student, and it was highly frustrating, especially considering the probable fate of the school (is it still circling the drain, Polly?).

That's the saga so far.  Super Dinky is still circling the drain with an even newer president who is faced with an even tougher go because of some extremely unwise decisions in the past couple years in a desperate grabbing at straws.  Super Dinky is on all the bad lists and has even stopped doing public announcements of their 10th day fall enrollments, which I assume is because they are very low.  Worse, Super Dinky has almost no faculty, staff, or administrators left who are stalwarts who will go down with the ship.  When I left, I was more than three-quarters up the seniority list at four years of service; more than half of all employees had less than one year at the institution. 

To address Mahagonny's implications:  teaching the drastically underprepared is a separate skill set from simply knowing the content or even just being a little more explicit with the slightly underprepared.  Some people can adjust to that situation with coaching and mentoring.  Other people are better off in other positions both for their own benefit and for the students.  We're doing no one any favors by sugarcoating how hard some of these jobs are, especially when one is underpaid and under supported.

[polly_mer]

Yet, my department does not give it to me for the previous semesters I taught here. It is because they don't want people to use it to find a job somewhere else and remain to be disposable part-timers?

YES!

These folks do not have your best interests at heart and do indeed want to continue to use you until they find someone better.