It’s that time of year when faculty exhilaration at the arrival of summer break is tempered only by a sense of dread over what we’ll find in our latest batch of course evaluations.
Even the most seasoned professors find it stressful and confusing at times to read evaluations from our not-always-kind students. The same course can prompt comments so contradictory that they sound like they are describing two very different instructors (“The course was so interesting I never skipped,” versus “Every class meeting was a snore-fest”). To happy customers, you may be exalted as a transformative teacher. The unhappy ones may be looking to settle a score, trading a nasty remark about you for that D you gave their paper.
Both of us are senior professors, so we recognize that the course-rating system has its problems — even more than usual in the wake of Covid. But we also believe that getting feedback on our teaching from students, and reflecting on its significance, is an important aspect of professional development. Our purpose here is to offer advice on how to (a) take advantage of the most useful feedback and (b) build a proper defense against the most hurtful critiques. Here are some of the problems, followed by some potential solutions.
Fixating on the negative. Scathing comments can sting, and some are downright mean. They can get stuck in your head in a way that good reviews don’t. That said, bad reviews can sometimes offer important insights. In life, greater survival advantages accrue when people pay attention to threatening conditions — i.e., losses loom larger psychologically than gains. Perhaps that’s why faculty reflection can border on rumination when we read our course evaluations: We focus inordinately on negative remarks rather than positive ones, even when the latter far outweigh the former.
Solution: Divide the negative remarks into two categories: legitimate constructive criticisms to reflect on (“You should be more adept with Canvas”) and irritants to be ignored (personal attacks, misrepresentations, incivilities). Of course some comments straddle both categories, with constructive feedback embedded in an unsavory package (“You stink at giving feedback. Feedback should be private, not public.”).
The key is to isolate the substantive part of the criticism and then try to understand why it was said. Chances are, you already know your deficiencies. Consider negative comments as fodder for further professional development.
Rating reliability. Throughout 2022-23, many faculty members reported that students seemed more “disconnected” than ever, and frequently skipped class. When it comes to filling out course evaluations, then, if some students are missing more than a third of all class meetings, how reliable can their critique be? How can they provide a fair assessment of a course experience in which they didn’t really participate? Yet at most institutions, there is no way to discriminate between evaluations from students who were serious and committed to the course versus those only partially invested.
Solution: Some evaluation forms ask students questions that can help qualify their comments as substantive (or not). For example, the form might ask students to estimate the number of hours the course demanded of their time each week and what grade they anticipate receiving. Both factors can influence a student’s conclusions about course quality.
Post-Covid crankiness. Before the pandemic, comments on course evaluations tended toward the positive more than the negative. But by many accounts lately, negative student evaluators have ramped up the nastiness. We’ve heard a lot of professors say that, since Covid lockdowns ended and in-person classes resumed, negative reviews feel more barbed than ever. One of us just counseled a brilliant teacher who got slammed for the first time on course evaluations and is reeling from the harsh criticism.
Does this trend reflect a new normal for incivility? Or perhaps the course-evaluation process has been contaminated by the free-for-all nature of discussion on social media? It’s unclear.
Most students have returned to in-person classes with energy and gratitude. Certainly, some students seem more fragile and have more mental-health issues than prepandemic. These students are under stress, and people who are struggling aren’t always very patient. In addition, many of this year’s sophomores and juniors received little-to-no socialization on routine college-classroom mores during the pandemic. Together those two factors might help explain the more-pointed barbs we’re hearing from students.
Solution: When you use class time to discuss what is working about the course, and what could be improved, you are socializing students to the importance of feedback for professional development, even for professors. Familiarize yourself with campus mental-health services and be prepared to guide students to the appropriate aid if their issues seem larger than just difficulties with your course.
Inclusion issues. This generation of students seems especially vigilant about policing any faculty remark that they perceive as “unwelcoming.” Professors who resist using a student’s preferred pronouns (e.g., they/them rather than he or she) are likely to be called out for that directly in class, but any perceived intersectional slights are also showing up on course evaluations (e.g., “I think she is racist because she called me by the wrong name”). Expect students to weigh in freely about your inclusivity (or lack thereof).
Solution: Prevention is probably your best strategy here. Make clear on your syllabus that you want to help all students succeed. Personalize your commitment to equity by going beyond the “boilerplate” diversity language that your institution requires you to post. On the first day of class, take some time to explain how important it is for you to get helpful feedback from students, either via the approved institutional evaluation process or, if they prefer, by coming to your office hours. Invite them to do both, which will reinforce your openness to hearing their suggestions.
False accusations and personal attacks. Such comments tend to be outliers, yet are still disturbing to read. “This professor was always late and never handed back assignments” stands out when most of your students reported the opposite. Or, “The professor didn’t know what he was talking about,” despite the fact that you wrote the course textbook. In such cases, the negative comment can be easily dismissed as cranky.
Confabulations are trickier. For example, a student may embroider an incident into something that looms much larger than you intended. A simple, “This essay could have been better” might be embellished as “The professor told the whole class that I didn’t have what it takes to succeed in college.” Be prepared for what you said and what the student heard to diverge dramatically on occasion.
The age, race, and gender of the instructor can play a role, too. Studies have shown that female faculty members, for example, tend to receive evaluations that are harsher and incorporate more personal critiques (e.g., “She is so full of herself”) than their male counterparts.
The mission of your institution’s evaluation process should be to offer constructive feedback about course design and delivery, but students aren’t necessarily attuned to that mission. Instead they may seize on the course eval as an opportunity to vent about your personality (“He is always making sarcastic comments he thinks are so funny”), motivation (“She crushed my dreams”), and even fashion choices (“Tell her to get some new shoes”). A particularly painful and memorable review one of us received was simple: “Go back to Indiana.”
Solution: Explain in class that you use course evaluations to make improvements, and that that’s easiest to do when the recommendations focus on course design and delivery. But also, think deeply about the underlying issue that generated student hostility to see if anything positive can be mined from their perspective. Although course evaluations are anonymous, students will sometimes provide clues to their identity because they want you to know who is intent on doing the damage. Resist all urges to follow up individually on the most egregious challenges. If you must, write a response to exorcise your bad feelings, then delete it and move on.
Low response rates. Historically, student evaluations used to be an in-class ritual: At semester’s end, you would hand out the evaluation forms and step away while students completed their ratings. That practice tended to produce response rates that were consistent with course attendance. Now, however, many institutions have migrated to online evaluations, which typically produce low response rates.
It’s in your interest to make sure that administrators don’t interpret low response rates as a sign of dissatisfaction with your course and/or your teaching. Two strategies can work to boost participation:
- Dedicate class time to filling out the digital forms. This allows you to explain their importance and helps students complete them without competing distractions.
- Offer incentives. Some faculty members grant bonus points to varying degrees, depending on what proportion of the class fills out the forms. The more students who participate, the higher the bonus. And students earn the incentives whether their feedback is positive or negative. A higher response rate tends to produce greater confidence that you’re getting the complete picture of how well the course worked.
Advice for the Professor and the Institution
Student evaluations of teaching are unavoidable for most of us. But both faculty members and administrators can take some positive steps to make the best of this source of feedback.
Eliminate the extremes. We all have an evaluation bias in how we see the world. Those with a positive bias will be happy with even mediocre teaching. Those with a negative bias will be unhappy even with stellar teaching performance. Consider lopping off the upper and lower 10 percent of your teaching scores, as a way to deal with excessive praise and criticism. Focus on the middle 80 percent as a more valid interpretation of student experience.
Teach your students the “etiquette” of course evaluations. Undergraduates who spent much of 2020-22 attending class online might especially be in need of some basic training on how to make substantive praise and criticism on course evaluations.
To improve the helpfulness and civility of student comments, take some time in class next fall to explain the value of constructive and helpful feedback. Define what you mean by “helpful” (comments focused on course structure and assignments, not on whether the student liked the material) and “civil” (criticism of the workload is valid, cheap shots at the professor’s looks are not).
Conduct a midsemester evaluation. Both you and your students can benefit from a midterm “time out” to gather information about how the course is unfolding — what’s working and what isn’t. Hand out an evaluation form for students to fill out anonymously in class or complete online.
Your first instinct might be to keep the results to yourself. But if you share the outcomes with the class and outline any adjustments you plan to make in response to the midsemester critiques, students are more likely to be generous in the formal evaluations at the end of the term. If you can’t make the changes they want, you can at least explain your approach. Either way, odds are, students will remember that you cared enough to check in and be responsive.
Use their comments to help you analyze your course design. No matter how many years of teaching you have under your belt, you can usually pull a good suggestion or two from any set of evaluations. Once you’ve discarded any rude or irrelevant remarks, look for patterns in their comments that might suggest where to focus your course changes or your own professional development. If they say:
- It’s impossible to understand what he wants in the project. Are your instructions as clear as they could be?
- You’d think by now this prof would know how to use Zoom. Do you need to step up your knowledge of technology?
- Why should I turn in papers on time when she’s so late handing them back? Do you return assignments and papers in a timely manner?
- The professor was completely insensitive when I explained why I missed a deadline. How clear is your policy about accepting late assignments?
- Avoid calling on the same handful of students every class. That’s a signal to change how you run class discussions.
- The curve was totally unfair. Have you adequately explained why you grade assignments the way you do?
- There were no extra-credit points available in this class. So unfair! Did you establish, early on, your policy on extra credit?
Don’t just look for negative patterns, either. Use trends and data from these forms to reinforce your teaching strengths in your annual evaluation for the department.
The best defense. If you are at an institution that incorporates course ratings into your annual performance evaluation, be prepared for administrators to at least scan the scores and comments in order to get a general feel for how your teaching is perceived in the classroom. Negative feedback is not likely to be fatal to your career. But neither do you want to be perceived as ignoring the existence of valid complaints — especially if they are consistently reported across different courses.
If a negative pattern is apparent, identify it and describe steps in a self-evaluation that you plan to take to remedy the problem in future courses. Be sure to supplement your own annual-evaluation materials with other forms of evidence of quality teaching to offset any harsh effects from negative student evaluations. Good administrators know they should not solely rely on student evaluations in making their year-end judgment about faculty performance.
Cushion the impact of course evals for new hires. Getting your first set of evaluations can be a shock to your personal and professional system. Don’t be afraid to turn to a seasoned mentor for advice. This mentor can normalize the typical range of comments, including sharing their own run-ins with aggrieved student reviewers.
Seasoned instructors can usually recall a searing comment from years ago, one that still hurts in retrospect. Hearing how they survived such unpleasantness can be comforting. With permission from the new faculty member, the mentor might get access to the evaluations first to figure out how to set context or provide a good interpretive approach to their first taste of student feedback. Alternatively, a voluntary discussion in the department to talk about strategies for building resilience in the face of harsh criticism would be a good investment of departmental meeting time.
Check administrative overreach. Unfortunately, faculty members aren’t the only ones who sometimes overreact to negative evaluations. Unless students’ comments reveal a clear and compelling pattern of difficulty for an instructor, administrators should guard against giving them undue weight — especially when the overall assessments are satisfactory or even positive.
Most of the time, it’s best to ignore the left-field comments. The exception: If even one student points out some action that appears to be discriminatory, such observations should necessarily be followed up to deal with the potential liability.
We steadfastly believe that if faculty members (and their supervisors) go through course evaluations with an open mind, then any barbs can be put into proper perspective — just as excessive praise can be viewed with appropriate moderation. You might not want to think about this just now, but in the summer weeks ahead, take some time to identify helpful recommendations and suggestions from this latest round of evals. Incorporate the best ideas into your teaching practice when the fall semester begins, as it inevitably will.