Course Evaluations (15-20 min)

You get these for all of your classes, usually in an email. You can also access it here: Student Course and Faculty Evaluations – Enrollment Management (cuny.edu) (click on “Log in” in middle of page and use your Baruch username and password).

What do these actually do? How are they most valuable?

Let’s start with a wider contextual information that helps see flaws in this system of evaluation.

Here are some sources:

Bias against female instructors is large and statistically significant. Difficult to adjust for this bias.

In addition to female instructors, there is a large bias in these methods of evaluation for people of color.

Here is a great bibliography of all research on bias in student evaluation surveys: Overview of bias in student evaluations – Google Docs (approximately 200 studies showing biases in student evaluation surveys)

And here is a popular source that sums up much of this research, especially one study that attempted to create ideal conditions in which these measures still end up being flawed: Study: Student evaluations of teaching are deeply flawed (insidehighered.com)

I offer none of this to say that *YOU* specifically are biased, but, rather, there is a lot of evidence for systematic bias (much of which may be unconscious) that tends to rate White and cisgender male instructors much higher than non-White and other gendered instructors, independent of teaching performance or course design.

All this said, these evaluation surveys are still commonly used across the U.S. and at Baruch.

Imperfect as they are, they are still used to evaluate instructors by administrators (i.e., management, bosses).

Imperfect as they are, they still communicate something and can be used by job seekers (or asked to be provided by employers) when applying for jobs or promotion.

Imperfect as they are, they can still give instructors some valuable information that might confirm or complicate intuitions instructors have about how the class went (and how to adjust for next time).

So, I would say to do the following when filling out these surveys for *ALL* of your courses:

• Do not rush through them. If you want to give a lower score, for instance, be sure you have thought it through and genuinely feel that way. Since these evaluations can have an effect on evaluation decisions (e.g., tenure, promotion, hiring/firing/laying off), be sure you are assigning scores you believe in and are filling it in thoughtfully. Try as best you can to take a breath and check in with yourself on where your criticism–good or bad–is coming from in terms of concrete and specific examples of the instructor’s approach to teaching and its impact on your learning.
• In open-ended portion, offer constructive criticism. If you did like something, explain what you liked. If you did not like something, explain why and do so in a way that is helpful toward revision of the course. Finally, if you do have something to offer that you did not like, try to think of something you did like, too. (this helps! it can confirm some things that are working which is just as valuable as saying something about what is not working).

Okay, so with that out of the way, let’s take about 10 minutes in class to complete the survey. I’ll need a volunteer to come grab me when the class is finished completing the survey.

 

Peer Review (30-45 min)

Writing should be read. We have a lot of knowledge in our heads that help us read something. A writer reading their own writing “fills in gaps” and knows what they mean in different and often more complete ways than other readers. By having other readers of your writing, you gain an advantage of having a “test” audience to see if what you tried to do is working or not and you get an opportunity to get a reaction from a reader that might help you shape your writing in ways you wouldn’t have thought of without their help. It makes for a richer revision process.

1. Exchange Writing and Questions for Feedback. Email each other your in-progress draft. Also provide directions or questions to readers about how they should direct their feedback on their draft (e.g., “please let me know if second to last section makes sense in connection to main argument,” “please let me know if my claims seem well supported by the evidence I provide,” “please let me know if my data analysis feels relevant in the place that I have it referenced,” “please let me know if I’m doing too many direct quotes in ways that make it hard to read,” “please let me know if my sentences are too long and it is hard to read”).
2. Reading aloud. Writer reads aloud their in-progress draft. This is IMPORTANT. Lots of research supports that reading aloud helps writers more easily identify changes to make because reading silently allows us to “skip over” parts of what we are reading. Reading aloud productively slows us down.
3. Take Notes. The writer should be taking notes if anything comes up while they read aloud. The listeners should take notes on: things they found important and exciting in the argument from a “big picture” perspective, sentences or phrases they found beautiful or particularly impactful, and places that they doubt or don’t understand as potential cuts or revisions as well as places to expand or revise as places that are working but could use a push in a more sophisticated direction.
4. Responders Repeat Back What They Heard. Responders try to say back the “big picture” of what they heard as in “This seems to be about ________ because ________” or “The focus here is about _________ and _________, right?”…stuff like that. Folks take notes as needed.
5. Writer Responds to Listeners. Writer then responds to these big picture interpretations to agree or modify their interpretations. They take notes as needed.
6. Listeners Share Positives. Listeners share what they liked and why in the draft based on notes they took before. Writer takes notes.
7. Listeners Share Suggestions. Listeners share suggestions for moving draft forward through cuts, revisions, expansions, etc. based on their notes. Writer takes notes.
8. Writer Repeats Back Takeways from Listener. Writer says back what they heard from listener with the positives and suggestions.
9. Writer and Listener Write Next Steps. Together, writer and listener write down at least two next steps (e.g., find more sources on X, write more about limitations to data set, move a part higher up and tweak it to fit that new spot in the paper).
10. Gratitude! Writing is sacred, it is sharing a part of yourself. It can be hard to share writing with other people. Show your appreciation to one another!

Next Time (2-5 min)

-Submit CfC project by tonight.

-Our last course meeting will be on Tuesday, May 17 on Discord.

-Any grade boost projects, due by May 24

-Any missing work, check your May 2 email from me. I may follow up. Send based on what we discussed for deadlines for you.

-Final reflective project, due May 24.