Professor evaluations: Are they meaningful?

The semester is quickly wrapping up, which means many things; however, one of the most important ones for professors is evaluations.

At the end of my first semester, all of my professors handed out course evaluations. There wasn’t really any explanation on what these evaluations would do, but it was explained that they were completely anonymous. They had to be taken up in a sealed envelope by a student and the professor couldn’t be in the room while we completed them.

The evaluations sometimes differed among courses, but most had the same standard questions about if the professor adequately prepared for class, returned grades in a timely manner and so on.

The evaluations changed at the end of last semester when UTM implemented a common evaluation form to be used campuswide. The new form has about 50 questions, as opposed to the previous 10 to 20.

These evaluations didn’t receive positive reviews from the student body. Students are told the evaluations are mandatory and grades will not be given unless they’re completed; there is no write-in option to allow for extra comments or questions; and students have had tenured professors who will not distribute evaluations.

Many students, when asked about their opinion of the professor evaluations, said the biggest problem was the format of the evaluations. Students don’t like the bubble-in format and feel like the evaluations are impersonal.

Many also said they feel like the professors do not value the evaluations and makes the students feel like completing the evaluation is pointless.

Ariel Dunavan, a senior Marketing major from Medina, Tennessee, said, “It seems like it’s not meaningful for us to do them.”

When asked what could be done to make the evaluations seem more meaningful, helpful and personal, several students suggested publishing the evaluations on UTM’s website. Creating a page that is categorized by department or college and uploading the evaluations for the courses/ professors would encourage students to be more conscious of their responses in order to help future students when deciding what classes and professors to take.

Students already have access to a site called “RateMyProfessor” that publishes comments on professors for almost every college. The commenter simply writes in an opinion or experience along with a number rating on overall quality, whether he or she would take the course again, level of difficulty and sometimes even physical appearance. Many students all across the country use this site to determine which professors to take for various classes.

The students I spoke with said that creating a UTM web forum similar to “RateMyProfessor” would greatly increase the seriousness of the evaluations. Students agreed that it would make them feel as if there is more of a purpose to the evaluations and hold the professors accountable in relaying the importance of them.

“As a student, if I knew what I was evaluating for, like if I knew the results mattered and would be published online, I would be more likely to take my time on them rather than just bubble in the same answer on every question,” said Macy Watkins, a senior Art major from McKenzie, Tennessee.

Others agreed that if the evaluations were published, they would spend more time on them because they would be helping other students.

Students also said they wished the evaluations were more focused on the professors’ teaching styles and how that helped, or hurt, their experience in the class.

The purpose of these evaluations is not to directly help the students but rather to report to the administration the performance of the professor. It’s scary to see that many students don’t take these evaluations seriously and therefore turn in careless answers.

Students aren’t aware that those evaluations are reported to administrators and can make determinations for a professor.

If professors who really aren’t fulfilling their role in the classroom are given all “satisfactory” ratings because the students don’t think the evaluations matter, that can allow those professors to continue to perform less than desirably without the administration ever knowing.

The same goes for professors who go above and beyond, but their evaluations come back with all “neutral” ratings. This could portray to administration that those professors are only doing the bare minimum and create questions about their performance.

I think professor evaluations are meaningful to some professors and that makes them meaningful to the students. If a professor prefaces the distribution of evaluations with the benefits and how important they are with complete honesty, I think that would show the students that the professor cares about their experience in the classroom and will use the evaluations as a guide to ensure the best performance.

The meaningfulness of evaluations is on a professor-by-professor basis. Students know long before evaluations occur if their professor cares and will use the results of evaluations as a teaching tool.