Korman: Surveys rush prof reflections

Pretend you want to be a lawyer. First, you must get into law school. This is generally… Pretend you want to be a lawyer. First, you must get into law school. This is generally accomplished by spending four years doing silly things like staying up until 5 a.m. making flash cards.

Unfortunately, your diligence is the only constant in these four years — your professors are the prime variable.

You get a C- on a term paper because of a ‘fatal misreading of the prompt,’ as your professor puts it. Your GPA drops to 3.87. Your first-choice school only accepts 3.9s and above.

You go to your safety school, inevitably located in central Pennsylvania. You drop out, never become a lawyer and spend the rest of your life in a mobile home. If only that professor realized you misunderstood the prompt because of an ambiguity on his assignment sheet. If only.

Professors have lots of pull in our lives. They scrutinize our every word. They have red pens. They get the key to the media cabinet. Unfortunately, RateMyProfessors.com can only go so far — it’s inevitable that we end up with at least one each semester who does not bother responding to e-mail or neglects to make review sheets.

We have but one chance at noble justice. However, the surveys distributed by Pitt’s Office of Measurement and Evaluation of Teaching fail to account for the essence of the modern American college student.

Questions 11 and 12 on the School of Arts ‘amp; Sciences questionnaire ask us if we would recommend the course and instructor to other students. Unfortunately, the rationale we tend to employ in recommending courses to each other has little to do with whether they were presented in an organized manner or have stimulated our thinking. Rather, the reason is more often along the lines of ‘the course requires little outside reading’ or ‘the instructor has several small children and cancels class whenever one is sick, which is often.’

Also, evaluations are typically distributed at the end of class, which presents us with an objectionable yet very real dilemma: Do we take the time to write a thorough evaluation or do we complete it hastily as to escape the oppressive classroom confines ASAP?

Even if a student feels a moral obligation to fill out the survey carefully, the opportunity to leave class early remains an orgasm-inducing proposition. If you have any doubts about this, have a professor walk into a class 14 minutes late and observe what happens.

There is, however, one inherent flaw in the current system that neither we nor our professors nor OMET has control over: Who are we to judge our professors at the present?

We are not scholars of educational theory and we are sometimes unaware of the long-term effects teachers have on us until long after the fact. My fourth-grade teacher once commented at a parent-teacher conference that I was a careless speller. I despised her for a long time, but it wasn’t until this year that her importance dawned on me. Like it or not, it’s because of her that I won my junior high spelling bee and why I always spell-check twice.

That professor who gave you the C- because you misread the prompt might be the reason why, years later, you always read instructions carefully and ask questions when something is unclear. Sometimes we need time to reflect in order to judge fairly.

Unfortunately, asking college students to ‘reflect’ after the semester has already ended would be like asking world-class athletes to stay in shape after they retire. (Fun fact: Charles Barkley used to be skinny.)

According to OMET director Nancy Reilly, the department researches and considers systems used by other colleges. For example, the University of Michigan just this year adopted a Web-based system for evaluating its professors. However, Reilly points out that the response rate for online surveys is far lower than that of those given in class.

Thus, we often end up filling out evaluations toward the end of the semester, when we are inundated with school work, and hostility toward professors is at its peak.

Fortunately, the OMET surveys make distinctions that attempt to neutralize our biases. For example, I’ve had incompetent professors who maintained excellent learning environments. I’ve had thought-stimulating ones who did not evaluate my work fairly. I’ve had life-changing instructors who did not present their courses in an organized manner.’ Such distinctions help keep us honest and prevent us from characterizing professors simply as ‘sucky,’ when they actually make terrific use of examples to clarify concepts.

Perhaps what we really need is some tangible compensation if we are to consider the surveys seriously. After all, professors get paid to judge us responsibly. But what have we ever gotten in return for evaluating them? Peace of mind? A sense of moral balance?

‘ (Do not answer if no basis to judge.)

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E-mail Ben at bek25@pitt.edu.

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