Course Evaluation

At the end of each semester, students fill out what is called "course evaluation," an anonymous questionnaire designed for improvement of teaching and course material.

I don't like it. I almost always end up filling it out with unthoughtful judgments and with insubstantial comments that are mostly made up and fallacious. I lie on my evaluations. I do (usually) want to be of some help in improving the course and teaching, but two things, I think, get in the way: firstly, the negative prejudice that I have against the system of evaluation as a whole, and secondly the fact that I place so little value on my opinions.

The system of course evaluation at U.Va is far from efficient. For instance, while evaluations can be filled out online, many departments still stick to the old-fashioned paper evaluation done in class, using 15-20 minutes of regular class period. In contrast to online evaluation, for which I can choose my free time and take as long as I would like, paper evaluation seems to be done very hastily. I understand that we are at a transitional phase, but the inefficiency strikes me as quite unreasonable.

Besides, most questions on the evaluation form are so vague and broad that I have such a hard time answering them. I am asked to answer, for example, in the scale from 1 to 5, if "overall, this class was worth taking." But how can I make such a judgment? My evaluation of things (even my "overall" evaluation) is so much more subtle that it is just plainly impossible to give it a simple numerical estimation. In a sense, any class is just as worthwhile/worthless than any other class.

Another incomprehensible question is the one that asks if "(in the scale from 1 to 5) I learned a great deal from this class." I can hardly understand how this item can be of help in improving the course, because, in my opinion, how much one can learn in a given period of time is a function neither of material nor teaching, but of one's willingness and intelligence. Besides, if a person learned that she can acquire no useful knowledge (whatever that is) from the class she has taken, has she not learned a great deal from that class?

But the most appalling question, for me, is this: "Would you recommend this class to others? Why or why not?" This is an outrageous question that assumes that every single person at the university has roughly the same background, interest, and intelligence. How could I ever be so presumptuous and preposterous to tell others which classes to take, without taking into account any background factor at all? That I liked the class and learned a great deal from it is in no way a reason to recommend it to others. For this question I always answer: "No. Because I don't recommend any class to anyone."

At a more general level, I seem to suffer from lack of opinion. Asked if "the instructor was an effective teacher," I have to stop and contemplate for a while for a truthful answer, until I realize that I have no particular opinion as to how effective my teacher is. I don't think I ever care about such a thing. I don't judge how good a teacher or a course is. My opinion, if it can be called one, is almost always, "well, for some, maybe, and for others, maybe not."

The question "how accessible was the instructor?" is one of the easier one to answer, because the amount and allocation of office hours can serve as a quasi-objective criteria. But the questions like "how organized was the instructor?" or "how knowledgeable was the instructor?" are very hard to answer. Obviously, some people would ask more and others less. You might say, "well, Yuuki, they are asking about what you think." But hey, I don't think anything! I am stunned by how some people can write on and on for questions like these.

Even more irrational is the question that runs like "did the instructor treat different perspectives equally?" I don't even understand what this means. What does it mean to treat different perspectives equally? Is it necessarily a desirable thing?

Even before the classes and the teachers, the evaluation itself must be evaluated.