April 21, 2008
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Here it goes, here it goes again!
Online student evals just plopped into my email.
So, what’s that mean? TIME TO VENT.
Most people/students know that I defend students all the time. Their writing ability, mainly. Today, however, I’m not going to. How come I STILL get crappy/crabby feedback from my online students? My “inconsistent grading” even though there’s a rubric, my “lack of direction/instructions” on certain assignments even after I’ve said that the GBP & the Final Group Essay were new assignments (they don’t cut me any slack… perhaps that’s what I get for not cutting them slack?), my “strictness” on late work, my ___…What’s hilarious is that they don’t even cover up who they are when the survey is anonymous. I can instantly tell who are the torked off students by what & how they write. Would they say these things to my face? Would they feel this way if they were doing well in the class? Would they think these thoughts IF I was older and male? [Yes, I constantly think I would be treated better if I were older and a male.]
AND why doesn’t the online system ask the same questions in the student evaluations as the on-campus ones? The on-campus evaluation form asks students to evaluate themselves & what effort they put forth.
I’m a good instructor & I constantly work at getting better, making my courses challenging AND fun. Anyone who thinks otherwise is missing a few marbles. Like Wade mentioned the last time I allowed these evals to frustrate me, I have to remember Steve Ward. I LOVED Steve’s classes, but not everyone did. He had lovers and haters, yet he was a great teacher although not everyone was up to his challenge. I wonder if Kevin & Betsy & Amy get crappy evals. They challenged the heck out of me.
Lastly, I found out this semester (by teaching 120 on campus) that the online class isn’t as overloaded with homework as I previously thought or was previously told. It’s actually a little lighter weekly in the homework area. FYI.
Okay. Finished with that vent. Thank you to all the students who gave me CONSTRUCTIVE criticism and/or applauded my efforts to make this class different/fun/challenging/complex.
Comments (2)
Hey Sybil: Don’t let the turkeys get you down. You are an awesome instructor. I wish you could teach Accounting, Math, and Business Management courses. I would love it.
Your classes are so DIFFERENT and UNIQUE. I love them. Also, as a student, it is much easy to blame things on a crappy teacher or inconsistent grading than to take responsibility and remind ourselves that a GBP cannot be thrown together in under thirty minutes.
Keep doing what you are doing – many of us appreciate it.
Thank you, Richard. I have to remind myself that some students can’t separate how they are doing in a class with what the class’s goals are, etc.