Should students be able to grade teachers?

[Eric`` 721]

Had a pretty interesting conversation today about this, wondering what you guys think? Would it hold teachers accountable more or would it just be used as an outlet to hate on teachers kids don’t like?

[@The End 2,069]

In colleges at the end of the semester there typically are teacher evaluations. I'm not sure how much weight they really have, but it seems they are means to typically used to reward really great teachers and potentially weed out really, really bad ones. 

 

 

[Howl 946]

In college we had a system called CIF (Course Instructor Feedback), that was essentially a long survey on each of your professors. If you filled out your CIFs, you got your grades like a week earlier than if you didn't - which incentivized the majority of students to fill out all of their CIFs (nerds). CIFs were taken pretty seriously by both the university and the professors. If a professor didn't have tenure, CIFs could sometimes decide if they were kept on.

 

In no way was the system perfect, but it definitely had an impact and I was thankful for it. As an aside, I usually didn't completely fill out my CIFs (particularly in the first semester of the year), because if I got my grades early it meant I got them before Christmas rather than after...

[Eric`` 721]

Oh wow interesting @Howl do you feel like people usually fill them out generally honestly? 

[≈Flukejiver 1,185]

easy outlet for students to hate teachers and get away with it. Wouldn't do any good imo

 

if you are talking about college specifically, then yes, I believe people are mature enough to use the system correctly. Any type of schooling lower it would be terrible.

Edited January 2, 2021 by Flukejiver

[Eric`` 721]

3 minutes ago, Flukejiver said:

easy outlet for students to hate teachers and get away with it. Wouldn't do any good imo

 

if you are talking about college specifically, then yes, I believe people are mature enough to use the system correctly. Any type of schooling lower it would be terrible.

This was my take too, I feel like younger people might use it as an outlet to hate on teachers. 

[Howl 946]

6 minutes ago, Eric`` said:

Oh wow interesting @Howl do you feel like people usually fill them out generally honestly? 

yeah people definitely took them seriously/honestly, I only heard a few examples of people being unreasonable with them

 

I think the students had the understanding that it was in their best long-term interest to give honest feedback to better the teaching rather than just shit on teachers they didn't like/whose classes were hard

[Adam_ 1,040]

They already kinda do

https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/

 

This is what I used for all of uni and most of my friends did as well in order to avoid certain professors for classes they were choosing, gotta be careful when they have a lower number of reviews though

 

Also in high school we would submit reviews and stuff similar to what Howl mentioned, I remember one year I was signed up to take courses with the same professor b2b semesters and went to drop it after the first semester was ass and was told that they had been seeing that a lot in the feedback and hearing it from other students and understood me wanting to drop the course 

 

For places that don't have something like this already i'd say yes, obviously gotta be careful about kids being spiteful towards teachers they don't like who won't put up with their bullshit or something but ya

Edited January 2, 2021 by Adam_

[Eric`` 721]

I didn’t know this was a thing already wow

[3lite 111]

I used to instruct a university lab.  All the students filled out an evaluation at the end of the semester and I had the opportunity to look at feedback before submitting to the university for documentation/filing away somewhere.  I would be surprised if there were university officials going over the evaluations - I think they were mostly for the instructor to get feedback on ways to improve.  There is a real mix of feedback you get, with most just being 10/10s across the board with no comments.  Some students do give really good feedback.  Others can be really big trolls or give really unfair/harsh feedback.

 

I don't know how I feel about evaluations from students that could impact a teacher's career.  In my experience, negative feedback more commonly comes from students who are performing poorly and are underachieving.  I could see this causing incentive for teachers to offer easier material and degrade the education experience.  Certainly at the high school level, I don't think many students would be mature enough to take responsibility for their actions and provide fair feedback.

At the college/university level, things are trickier because as students pay for the courses and are more likely to be there with interest in the material/getting a good education.  Additionally there are fewer things in place than high school that allow for evaluation (e.g., no standardized testing, no teacher sit-ins, parent-teacher conferences). However, for the college/university level, folks have to realize what is most important to the university, which isn't always teaching. 

From a university's standpoint, what gets new recruit students coming in is prestige.  This is why universities spend so much on sports teams.  This is also why professor evaluations are based on research outputs.  Attaining tenure at a research university is often based on how many publications your lab puts out, how successful your PhD/post-doc students are, and your ability to establish a research program. 

 

Sure, there are some instructors that are purely teaching based, but I think most research-based university professor evaluation is based more on their research outputs than teaching ability.  I think its a common misconception that a university professor's main role is teaching - while an important part of what they do, the vast majority of many professor's time is devoted to research/filling out grants to get research/supervising PhD students to put out more research/ensuring a functional lab.  Even normal instructor-y jobs (like grading assignments) are often relegated to PhD students, lab instructors, post-docs, or other staff paid to do so.

Edit: ^the above is from the perspective of someone in a scientific field - other fields may vary.

Edit2: likely doesn't apply to community or non-research colleges.

Edited January 2, 2021 by 3lite

[Sus 136]

Srsly just tell them to fak off and stop bullying you 

[Buzz 99]

I think it depends on the country. 

 

I'd say probably not in the UK just because teachers are vetted stringently and they need a high level of education. 

[Vanzant 1,383]

I think some colleges already do this

[Out 315]

Not here.

Teachers here have performance management regularly throughout the year.

[Buzz 99]

16 minutes ago, Out said:

Not here.

Teachers here have performance management regularly throughout the year.

Looks our education systems all need to follow in the footsteps of Tuvalu.