Stories News Digest In Context All

Dal students could have access to course evaluations

University-related groups have been discussing the idea for years but a confusing web of internal issues has prevented the issue from becoming a reality

A Dalhousie board of governors committee is discussing making teacher evaluation data available to Dal students, according to a board report given to the Dalhousie student union Oct. 14.

But a number of forces complicate the issue – a slew of committees, unions, boards and associations with members from various positions of power are involved.

Students fill out teacher evaluations, usually on the last day of class before exams, as a way to provide feedback to teachers. Universities use the data to evaluate teachers' performance and investigate complaints.

The source of the issue

The issue of making evaluations public to students has been going on for a few years, says Shannon Zimmerman, a board of governors representative for Dal's student union.

“This has been a major issue for the DSU for years,” says Zimmerman, who has always remembered it being discussed since she became involved with the student union four years ago. “I think that now that the board has stated that they have interest in it, it means that there is more work that will be done on it.”

“(The issue) has gone from the board to the senate to take care of the actual logistics of it.”

A more effective way of assessing professors and classes – administered by the university fairly and accurately – is needed so students don’t rely on heavily biased sites such as ratemyprofessors.com, says Zimmerman.

An associate dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies, Sunny Marche, says there have been “many discussions about course and professor evaluations, especially in the context of performance support" since he joined the board in 2003.

“A number of members of the committee, and I count myself among them, are very interested in improving transparency and accountability when it comes to course and professor performance," says Marche, also a Dalhousie board of governors member who sits on the academic affairs and research committees.

There’s interest, but it’s complicated.

Moving through resistance

Making teacher evaluation data go public isn't something that can be done overnight.

In the past, university legal council pointed to complications involving Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy legislation on the provincial level.

“Some people hold the view that course and professor evaluations are a form of personal information that should be protected in some way,” says Marche.

David Mensink, president of the Dalhousie Faculty Association, says he can't “speak on behalf of other teachers” about resistance from professors. He says the association's official stance lies within the collective agreement – a 226-page document of “legalese” outlining agreements between the university and its faculty that could prevent the issue from moving forward.

Again, it's complicated.

Reaction from professors

An economics professor at Dalhousie says evaluations need to be interpreted carefully.

“If you get a high one it doesn't necessarily mean you're a good teacher”, says Ruth Forsdyke.

Teacher evaluations provide valuable feedback to professors but if professors become too concerned about pleasing their students and focus too much on learning how to get good evaluations, they aren’t necessarily learning to become better teachers, says Forsdyke.

“If you make your class easy you can get higher evaluations,” she says, based on her own experience as a professor.

Forsdyke suspects that making evaluations public to students would give them even more importance.

“I would be concerned that posting them publicly would make the evaluations even more important as a criteria for evaluating teaching and I think that can be negative.”

Putting bureaucracy to the side, Marche, a professor in the Faculty of Management himself, is personally “in favour of some form of disclosure of teacher and course rating… and possibly even some, or all, of the comments, assuming they are edited for libel.”

Other universities

In Kingston, Ont., the Alma Mater Society of Queen’s University, the undergraduate student government has been putting pressure on university administrators to make teacher evaluations public every year, says its president, Talia Radcliffe.

Teachers at Queen’s who opt in to the current program have their evaluations uploaded to Queen’s site whatswhat.ca, where students can access teacher performance records to help them decide what classes they want to take.

“The specific issue that we argue for each year is an opt-out system, so that professors are forced to choose not to submit their evaluations, and not vice versa. I’d like to believe most professors are transparent about their teaching evaluations.”

Saint Mary’s University has a similar program called “online professor reviews” hosted on the student’s association homepage. Students log in to rate their professors the same way they do at ratemyprofessors.com. But the system doesn’t see much use – the most reviewed professor has been rated only 10 times by students.

What lies ahead

There is generally a false idea among those who don't participate in governance that the board of governors can approve things with a rubber stamp, says Marche. "(But) there is often sustained spirited discussion and debate, especially at the committee level."

Almost everyone agrees it's unlikely evaluations will go public anytime soon.