There have always been two things present in every class I have ever taken at OU - drawings in my notes and teacher evaluations. I would have to say the drawings are the more useful of the two.
I understand that a review is an important part of determining how well an instructor is teaching. I am sure many of those evaluations have greatly helped myriad professors secure even better underpaid and overworked jobs than what they once had. I just think there has to be a better way.
From my experience, students don't fill out evaluations honestly. Anyone who does more than mark '5's all the way down is working with anger in his or her blood. I've seen it happen, a student takes ten minutes (more than the time ever spent studying, I'm sure) just rambling about out how much he or she hated the professor.
Reviews like this do nothing to evaluate a professor's performance. If anything, it allows a passive-aggressive student to scratch out a modicum of revenge at the end of a failed quarter.
When a student isn't spouting hatred for a teacher, he or she is probably lying about how great the class was. Perhaps it's fear of a professor's reading the thing and crying his or herself to sleep because of a bad review. Perhaps there are students who truly believe that every class is THE best class EVER. Perhaps students just need to grow up and tell the truth about teachers.
Even more likely, teacher evaluations need to be forgone for a more accurate mode of monitoring a professor's performance.
I accept the fact that I'll always be greeted with those annoying sheets of questions at the end of each quarter. However, if a professor is truly doing a great job, I'll tell him or her myself.
Alexander Marietta is a junior studying journalism and columnist for The Post. Send him an honest review at am310906@ohiou.edu
Mid-term season is over, and, my friends, it wasn't too pretty. I'm a busy man. I have things to do and people to see, so I'm neither surprised nor angry that my lack of studying led to a lackluster grade on a few exams. I would never hold it against a professor. I don't feel I'm alone in this mentality.
Professor evaluations must be treated as a fact of life, just like gravity and Dane Cook sucking (Yes, I said it. Write me an angry e-mail defending your boi
if you're literate).
To not provide students with a comfortable, anonymous opportunity to honestly critique their professors would open an unfortunate hole in the space-time continuum. Wait, no. It would open the door for truly bad professors to unjustly terrorize students.
Yes, I've never personally met a terrible professor. Yes, I know for a fact there are plenty of (despicable) students who take out frustration with their lame scholarly performances on their undeserving professors through evaluations.
However, outliers who take a pot shot at professors over a bad grade can't possibly threaten their job. If a teacher is high caliber, well-reasoned, honest evaluations will reflect that and our spiteful crybabies become a joke.
As far as finding a better way to critique our professors, I don't think there is one. It doesn't delight me to think that a vengeful student is capable of ruining someone's day by writing a personal attack on an eval, but not everything is delightful.
The current method of evaluation at OU is based on a truth in numbers mentality. Out of 50 students, if one says you're a dog and 49 say you're a champ, the naysayer is a sourpuss. If it's the other way around, odds are a professor really isn't doing so hot.
Kent Clements is a junior studying journalism and a columnist for The Post. Send him a scathing personal attack at kc376907@ohiou.edu
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Opinion
Alexander Marietta and Kent Clements
