See article in the NY Times mAgazine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/magazine/21wwln-evaluations-t.html?scp=3&sq=student%20evaluations&st=cse
Near the end, the writer, reflecting on the viability of these evaluations wonders something I myself have been wondering: "After all, when students report having learned a lot, how do we know to trust them?"
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A topic near and dear to my heart as I prepare my RTP package, due Thursday at 5pm. (And for those of you lucky enough not to work in sausage factories, no I'm not going up for tenure.) For me, it represents one more ratchet down on the inevitable slide toward mediocrity that comes with trying to businessify higher education. I remember CBJ saying once that he was going to try to use the board more because that's what some dumb-assed student wrote on an evaluation. Talk about missing the point.
For me trust is like faith--a leap. I can't really know how much is "a lot" or what exactly they learned. I go on instinct and experience much of the time. My hope is that students will at some point, probably somewhere way down the road (when does learning really take place?), will have a practical reason to use their Spanish or, if they are literature students, will have discovered the unknown world of Spanish literature. Beyond pragmatism and appreciation, my desire as a teacher is much deeper and far more immeasurable in this age of free market capitalism with its impulse to quantify and create false standards because numbers lose sight of quality--but numbers nonetheless that are too easily measurable and simiplistic but which can JUSTIFY THE BOTTOM LINE and our performance. Pure stupidity, but I digress. (Kent: I feel your pain, but in a much smaller way since I'm out here in the Ozarks) What do I want?: (I wish we could create a colon/question mark): I want to be a teacher-scholar-theorist-servant (not slave) (TSTS)who can make a positive difference in the way students act, think, and feel. Make deep learners out of them--something that is intangible and difficult to measure. My question would be: Has this course helped you to be a deep learner? Or maybe: Do you often lie?
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