Logistics of course evaluations have come under scrutiny as academic department coordinators (ADC) become more frustrated with the system of distribution and review.

The college requires academic departments to distribute course evaluations to every student in each course. Students complete these evaluations on paper in their classes. According to Professor of Creative Writing and chair of the Faculty Personnel Committee (FPC) Adrienne Su, explained the importance of course evaluations. “[Course Evaluations] provide a general sense of student perspectives on a course […] students are there day after day and can comment on ongoing aspects, such as written feedback on assignments,” she said.

ADCs have spoken out about the intensive process and labor of course evaluations. Laura Weber, ADC for International Business Management (INBM) and International Studies (INST) described the amount of work course evaluations add. ADCs receive a list of all the courses they are responsible for evaluating, and then they must schedule the evaluations with the professors. The ADCs then must schedule a facilitator or administrator, which can be an ADC, one of the two departmental student office assistants, members of the majors committee or students she knows in the class to facilitate the evaluation. ADCs must organize supplies for evaluation and distribute them to classes. The ADCs must go through every evaluation for every course and make sure that the circles are colored in correctly and erase any stray marks before a deadline.

Weber described the stress and frustrations with the process, as “sometimes students will do the evaluation in pen and in that case, I have to take a new form and copy all of their answers in pencil exactly how they have it,” said Weber. “This past semester for INBM alone I had 30 course evaluations to do – INBM is the largest major and INST is the fourth most popular.” She added that “spring course evaluations typically occur when other large events are happening like for the spring the senior INST orals or planning senior receptions the INBM honors evaluations.”  Weber said she completes these tasks amongst her other duties as the ADC like managing budgets and scheduling courses for the following semester.

Weber recognized the difficulties of trying to do an electronic evaluation but suggested that the evaluations be tied into a student receiving grades or as some other requirement. Other improvements include somehow allowing for the faculty member to take the evaluations to their course and leave the room, and then have a student in the course be in charge and numerically order the forms and bring them back to her. “Scheduling administrators and facilitators is one of the most time-consuming parts,” she said and explained an instance of five scheduled evaluations at the same time in different academic buildings.

Other colleges and universities complete online course evaluations to reduce paper waste. According to Su, the college chooses to collect responses on paper because of low response rates for online evaluations. “If response rates were equal, electronic evaluations would save both paper and time because ADCs scan the paper ones to digitize them,” she said. According to Neil Leary, director of the Center for Sustainability Education (CSE) course evaluations require 18,000 pieces of paper per year. This number is only a fraction of the 3.1 million pieces of paper used by members of college in the 2018-19 fiscal year, according to Leary.

Su also recognized the amount of work that ADCs and the FPC put into course evaluations. “[I]t is a lot of work, as the forms have to be read with care, over several semesters, for every faculty member under review, and put into the context of other feedback on teaching,” she said.

Students had mixed reactions to course evaluations in general. Pamela Ortiz ’21 thinks course evaluations can be helpful if students write what they think but feels that students do not always take the evaluations seriously. “It’s a task they have to do so they just try to get it out of the way as fast as possible and don’t necessarily write how they feel about the course or professor,” she said.

Tanvi Kurup ’23, questioned the anonymity of the evaluations. “Students feel like they have an obligation to rate the professor in a more positive way. Although grades have already been submitted and can’t be changed after the fact, I still feel like students can’t put the thoughts they really feel or think,” she said.

Franklin Saeteros ’22 said it is helpful for students to provide feedback to their professors. However, he expressed concern that students do not actually know if any changes are incorporated.  “So while it’s helpful to express how we felt or thought about the course and professor, we don’t really know if our comments are useful for the next class section,” he said.