Friday, November 11, 2011

Student Evaluations

My uni seems to take student evaluations (of foreign teachers) very seriously.  Like the top 3 people get recognized each semester and the bottom 1 or 2 seem to get fired.

My coworkers express a lot of frustration over this system because it seems like some students just randomly fill the evaluation out and don't take it that seriously.  Like just marking, 8,8,8,8 and not even reading each thing.  For example, one of the criteria is "never cancels class" or something to that effect.  I've maybe canceled 2 classes in my 5 years here (due to cold of death...I should have canceled 2 weeks!) and I still don't get 100% scores on that. 

But the thing is, since my uni recognizes the top teachers, you can always see who's in the Top 3.  And the top 3 each semester have always been people that I thought were pretty decent/good/excellent teachers.  And there truly has never been someone in there that I couldn't figure out why. 

So if you want to get high evaluations from your students, just do an excellent job of teaching and don't worry about the rest.  Prepare.  Dress professionally.  Be kind and respectful of your students (they can tell, despite the language barrier).  Don't look down on those who are poor at English.  Don't cancel classes.  Make your tests fair and easy to understand.  Be creative.  Prepare some more.  Grade their tests and homework with helpful feedback.  Maintain appropriate boundaries.  Help the slow ones to the best of your ability.  Be generous with your time. Relax and have a joke and a laugh with your students once in a while. 

That's it.  Pretty simple.  

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