EDITORIAL: Course evaluation results should be available to students
Every student at the University of Houston–Clear Lake (UHCL) participates in a course evaluation toward the completion of each semester. This creates a tool for the university and faculty to evaluate student feedback and potentially improve in less than proficient areas. However, how do students know that their voice makes a difference through these evaluations? Is the university making any changes at all?
While other universities, such as the University of Houston (UH), display their results from these evaluations, UHCL keeps the results confidential. UHCL should follow the practice of displaying the numerical results of faculty/course evaluations because it allows students to make better-informed decisions when choosing a course/professor that is the best fit for them.
Faculty review sites
Across the country, students seek out tools to learn how professors structure their course and how a course prioritizes its workload. For example, RateMyProfessors.com brings thousands of students to its website every semester for guidance on selecting a professor and or course. While this provides some feedback to students, it also brings a largely biased opinion that may not represent a fair argument.
Like any optional survey, most people only leave feedback when they are very satisfied, or very unsatisfied with their experience. RateMyProfessors shows no exception to this theory. Typically, there is no constructive criticism to show why a reasonable student would or would not like the class. On the contrary, the feedback usually focuses on how much, or how little work is given and how attractive the professor looks. Unfortunately, this feedback does not hold true beneficial weight when it comes to students enrolling in courses. Another negative attribute for tools such as this is that only a small percentage of students who finish the course even bother to leave feedback, unlike school evaluations, where students are prompted to do so during class time.
Trends and results
Displaying the numerical results from student evaluations would showcase a fair representation because it is a compilation of every or almost every student who enrolled in the course. This allows students to study a specific course/professor’s evaluation from more than one semester. Compiling these results together would showcase any trends that students might have with certain courses/professors. If year after year students bring the same complaints or praises toward a professor, this starts a notable trend. If the university keeps this hidden from the UHCL public, how does anyone know if these evaluations even matter? Making them public creates an open door to show if the student’s tuition is holding its value by keeping the right faculty with the right courses, or even if a post-tenure review is in order.
A System-wide policy
UH has made its course evaluations public information. Students can go to the M.D. Anderson Library on campus and view physical copies of the results or they can view them online, the week after finals. To clarify, all results shown are only the numerical responses to the rating questions asked in each survey. Results from personal written comments remain confidential to the faculty and administrators. UH has created an open door to its students by showing the results from these evaluations, which seems like a right move rather than a privilege considering this is a public institution. UHCL, and the other UH–System universities, should follow suit by giving their students the right to view their results.
Privacy issues
An argument some professors share against making course evaluations public is the belief that releasing the results creates a breach of privacy. These faculty members feel only they should see their students feedback on their own teaching performance because they have a right to discretion. However, Academic Freedom of Individual Professors is defined by the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, which was developed by the American Association of University Professors, and the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
The statement reads: “As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.”
Public results for UHCL students
Students should have the right to view the numerical results of course evaluations at UHCL. Looking toward other universities that make this information public proves a precedent exists for the students to have access. It will help students make a more informed and less biased decision when selecting which professor or course to take. It will help UHCL keep an open door to its students by publicly breaking bad trends of professors staying in positions that do not work well for students, while also keeping good trends by maintaining and/or promoting faculty in positions that students are praising. It will help UHCL retain students by showcasing honesty and fairness through actions made by the university based on these public evaluations. The accumulated results after every semester provide a better benchmark than any review site that is offered outside of the university.
Also published on Medium.
