Starting this week, students have a chance to turn the tables by grading their professors.
Online course evaluations, available to students on the Toolkit Web site, were opened for operation Monday.
Director of Advanced Technology Timothy Sigmon said the online evaluations carry a new innovation this fall.
"For the first time, the faculty has the ability to add questions to the evaluations," Sigmon said.
The evaluations will be opened for specific time intervals determined by each department, Sigmon said.
"About a half or so will close at 9 a.m. [Dec. 8]. Others will go through Dec. 17," Sigmon said.
The technical design and implementation of the evaluations were developed by the Advanced Technology group at ITC.
Faculty Senate Chair Bob Davis emphasized the importance of completing course evaluations.
"The faculty wants feedback," Davis said. "It's important to have independent information from the students. You want to get a large enough statistical sampling."
Davis stressed the negativities of limited student participation -- warning against a misrepresentation of students' attitudes toward courses and instructors.
"If [professors] only have a few responding, [they] will only hear from the extremes -- people that are fluent and love the course and those who hate it," Davis said. He added that in addition to faculty peer evaluations, student feedback is important in determining faculty promotions.
In order to increase student participation in the course evaluations, some professors have offered academic incentives.
"If you want good faculty, you need good evaluations," Economics Prof. Edgar Olson said. "Without incentives, the participation rate has been very low. That can give a very distorted view on the course. I guess the students who are the most disgruntled would be most likely to sign on. That would result in bias."
In the past, Olson's courses have been based on a 2,000 points system. Since professors do not know specifically which students participate in the course evaluations, Olson's incentive policy added one point to the grade of every student for every 5 percent of the class responding -- with a maximum of 20 points for full participation.
"It was a relatively small fraction but it could move you from a B- to a B," Olson said.
First-year College student Jane Yarney said she favors the convenience and ease of the online evaluations as compared to paper alternatives.
"It's better because it's online," Yarney said. When you get them in class, the teacher gives them out at the end, and you think: 'Oh great, 10 more minutes of filling out this evaluation.'"
Yarney added that she uses Toolkit frequently, so the implementation adds even more convenience. She said that she plans to fill out the evaluations for all her classes.
Some question, however, whether the evaluations are effective. Second-year College student Cindy Hurt said they may be misleading.
"I don't think they work," Hurt said. "Students don't use them correctly."
Hurt explained that she thinks that while students will more likely praise good professors accurately, they are reluctant to evaluate poor professors. She said that a large amount of neutral responses to professors' questions will negate underlying poor sentiment toward some instructors.
Online implementation is a recent innovation, dating back to the end of spring 2003 semester. According to Davis, paper evaluations have been used in the environmental science department with set questions for decades.
Recently, an advisory committee headed by Education Prof. Daniel Hallahan has been created to address issues regarding the evaluation system. The committee plans to have its first meeting today.
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