Magda Konieczna

Make course evaluations public this time

appeared in Imprint January 3, 2003 (see the original)

So the discussion about making course evaluations public has surfaced again. As Susan Bubak writes on page 1, the Feds academics commission hopes to make the evaluations public this year. Robin Stewart, 1998-99 Feds VP education, also set out to do this. There is no good argument for not making evaluations public; the fact that Stewart did not succeed makes me wonder how difficult the task is.

In March of 1999, Stewart and a group from UW administration agreed that course evaluations should be publicized. News stories from the time indicate that the major disagreement was whether student comments should be public as well. Many faculty members believed that comments should remain with the professor.

There was also a disagreement regarding what it would mean that evaluations should be "made available." I was surprised to find that math and engineering evaluations are currently available. I later found that I didn't know the evaluations were public because, while they are available, they are not easily accessible. Yes, every math and engineering student can look at course evaluations. However, the situation at UW is not comparable to Queen's or U of T, where course evaluation booklets are published and available at little or no cost.

The fact that course evaluations are not publicly available is a mystery to me. Any arguments I've heard against making the evaluations public (things like evaluations could be based on a grudge against a professor or students could rate poorly a professor with high expectations) seem to be based on rare situations that would be irrelevant over a large sample. Feds and administration agreed in 1999 that statistical results of evaluations should be published; why have we yet to see the results?

It seems there is a fear among the faculty of what might happen if students have the opportunity to hear what others thought of their teachers. If professors are confident that they are providing students with a good educational experience, they should realize that they have nothing to fear. Students talk about professors anyway; given a formal way to do so, discussion would be more factual and students would have access to more opinions. If professors are not confident in their skills, they should find out what students see as their areas of weakness so that they can work to improve.

Professors are our greatest resource. They are here to pass knowledge on to the next generation and we should make it as easy as possible for them to do this well.

In a June 4, 1999 Imprint story, Sarah Crellin wrote "both the Feds and the Faculty Association see published evaluation results on the horizon, and students can prepare to have more information on which to base their course selections." If Sarah is still tuned into the UW community, I expect she's surprised that these results are still not available. I hope the Feds make good of their promise this time.