Fish on Student Evaluations

Take that, student evaluations! Stanley Fish lowers the boom (Via Steve). Fish criticizes the questions some evaluation forms ask of students, like: "Did the instructor give lectures that facilitated note taking?" "Have you learned and understood the subject materials of this course?" etc. I agree, some of the questions put most or all the onus of learning onto the instructor, and some are problematic in other ways -- for example, at my university, students are asked to assess the instructor's use of technology to facilitate learning in the course. The teacher could be phenomenal but low-tech and could end up looking bad just because of that. Sometimes there are questions about course design that ask students to evaluate the teacher for decisions that have been made at the administrative level (the assignments, structure of the course, which textbooks are used, etc.). He's spot-on in that regard. But Fish goes further, suggesting that the very idea of having students evaluate teaching is wrongheaded. He calls instead for a grievance process that would be confidential and would catch problems early, while admitting that most colleges and universities already have such processes. What bothers me about the article is the idea that students' opinions are "ill-informed" and that students are unqualified to assess courses. Fish writes:

No doubt in many colleges and universities a grievance process is already in place, and if it is, there is absolutely no need for the waste of paper and time that now goes into preparing, printing, distributing, collecting, and tabulating forms that report the unfiltered opinions of those who, for whatever reason, decided to express them.

To be sure, there would still be a need for teaching evaluations that could legitimately play a role in promotion and tenure decisions. Those evaluations, however, could be provided by the system of peer visitation already used by most departments. It is, after all, a matter of judging professional competence, and who better to do that than a professional, someone who visits your class and assesses what you're doing (or trying to do) in the context of a career-long effort to do the same thing.

Is this whole article supposed to be a joke...? Some of us find student feedback quite valuable, at least as valuable as a one-time class visit and write-up (though those evaluations are much-needed too). What about the problems involved in peer visitation evaluations? While a sympathetic observer is a good thing, sometimes the resulting write-ups can be a little too rose-colored.

After reading the article, I thought: Oh yeah! I need to email University Course Evaluations and arrange for the Early Semester Evaluation Forms to be sent to my students.