When it comes to course evaluations, I think there are two types of instructors. Some get the evaluations returned and jump right into them, eager to see what their students had to say (or not to say). Some get the evaluation results and stuff them in a drawer, or move the email to some random folder: out of sight, out of mind.
I'm the latter type. Generally, I only look at course evaluations when I have to access them for performance reviews. Until that time, I just avoid them. And, it isn't that I get poor reviews or numerous complaints about the class. I just don't want the feedback, positive or negative. If I teach a class of 120 students and one of those students notes how much the class sucked on their evaluation, I will hone in on that bit of feedback over the hundred other bits of feedback, mostly positive.
Maybe that approach to teaching feedback is why I delayed reading Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen's Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well. The book sat on an end table in our living room for weeks, maybe even months. My wife had offered me some feedback that I may enjoy and find the book useful. Every time I sat near the book, I felt judged by its cover, like the course evaluations I shove in an office drawer. However, in a search for a way to pass some time one evening, I picked the book up to just read the first few pages. That opening sentence, "We swim in an ocean of feedback," pulled me in as I reflected on how nearly every aspect of our lives is filled with feedback. While my perspective for understanding the book initially relied on my experience as an academic (no shortage of feedback there), I quickly found the book's approach to receiving feedback reflected all aspects of our feedback lives (as a parent of teenagers, I can attest to the abundance of feedback).
I appreciate the authors' admission that we are saturated by feedback, in our work lives, our family lives, our daily lives, our online lives, etc. Whether we seek it out or not, we get feedback, including positive and negative feedback. So, why not get better at understanding feedback and how you can receive feedback more effectively? Ultimately, you may even seek feedback!
A key takeaway for me that stuck with me through the entire book involved unpacking the understanding of feedback as either positive or negative. Instead, I appreciate the authors' separation of feedback into appreciation, coaching, and evaluation. One aspect of academic life that garners a fair amount of attention is course evaluations. While still used at my university, course evaluations' value appears to have waned of late. And, that decreasing value is not just for the recipient (the instructor), but also for the institution, the current student, and the future student. This lack of value for all parties involved in course evaluations is captured nicely by Adriana Signorini and her co-authors: "[W]hen student feedback does not indicate what students need and how the instructor can meet those needs, all parties that engage with SET tools (students, instructors, and administrators) suffer. Furthermore, when the sole focus of SET is the unidirectional evaluation of teaching quality, SET procedures become a missed opportunity for communication between students and instructors and an invalid instrument when it comes to improving the teaching and learning experience." The misalignment of course evaluation tools noted in the above quote reflects Stone and Heen's warning regarding the crossing of wires in feedback--confusion as to the type of feedback sought by the receiver, offered by the giver, or expected by the organization.
To my mind, course evaluations capture this confusion over the type of feedback. There is a misalignment of purpose. The authors offer three questions for feedback givers and receivers to consider in a feedback situation and, while these questions apply to all aspects of (academic) life, they highlight a discrepancy in course evaluations, I think.
"Ask yourself three questions:
What's my purpose in giving/receiving this feedback?
Is it the right purpose from my point of view?
Is it the right purpose from the other person's point of view?"
In the case of course evaluations, is the purpose to assess, evaluate, improve, appreciate, coach, etc.? While the purposes may be complicated and messy, the purposes need to be discussed and made aware to givers and receivers. I tend to think that there is confusion among students and instructors and administrators about the purpose of course evaluations and not just between groups but within groups. I have to guess if we asked students individually what the purpose of a course evaluation is, we would get a variety of answers, from "to let the instructor know what I didn't like about the course" to "advice on what assignments were not as useful or clear as others" to "how awesome I think this instructor and class is" to "why gen ed courses are a waste of time."
The authors second point on how to untangle these three types of feedback involves our tendency to fixate on evaluation. We tend to engage in feedback conversations or reports with mixed purposes, so our course evaluations or performance reviews for example may include coaching and evaluation or appreciation. As the authors note, "The bugle blast of evaluation can drown out the quieter melodies of coaching and appreciation" (43). This is so apparent in the way I, as well as other instructors, tend to fixate on that one critical evaluative bit of feedback in an otherwise positive review. If I receive good overall scores and many positive comments of appreciation, I will still overly focus on that one comment regarding how useless my lectures were, or how confusing the assignments were, or how my jokes weren't funny. In this way, we may need to not only reframe the purpose of course evaluations, but also separate evaluation from coaching and appreciation.
The issue of feedback with course evaluations is not just an instructor issue, even though we hear a lot about instructor's frustrations with course evaluations, these evaluations also aren't great for students (perhaps witnessed in the low completion rates). And, perhaps this is why many students turn to other forms of course feedback, from friends to websites, such as Rate My Professors. Students don't see the results of course evaluations; they don't function like my rating on Yelp for a recent dining experience. We rely on and are asked to give feedback on all aspects of our daily lives; my inbox seems to always have emails asking for my feedback about a doctor visit, an Amazon purchase, or a hotel stay. When planning a future visit somewhere, I can check out reviews and feedback from past guests. But course evaluations don't function that way, and for good reason. The cross-purposes and tangled nature of course evaluations would make the reviews confusing and useless. Even now, the abundance of reviews on Amazon is overwhelming. Recently, someone noted that to make them more useful look at the 3-star reviews. And, I think that may be useful in the world of course evaluations--we get all critical evaluation or all positive appreciation.
I have only focused on the opening section of the book (and really, only on one aspect of the opening section), but this initial separation of feedback types stuck with me through the remainder of the book. I also found that the book may have worked best for me in parts: reading about an aspect of feedback and digesting it and then later coming back to the book for another concept. Reading the book from front to back without backing off to apply or consider or live with specific aspects of receiving feedback felt overwhelming at times (and left me to fall back on evaluation, appreciation, and coaching.) I think there is a lot for academics to unpack with this book and the role feedback plays in academic work, from teaching to research to service to advising. The ways in which we evaluate teaching at the post-secondary level are under discussion. While course evaluations may exist and are a part of performance review and tenure cases, they have been supplemented with other approaches, including faculty observations, mid-semester feedback sessions, enrollment/drop numbers, etc. I'm not sure any of these approaches, even in combination, get us out of the feedback issues. After all, with all of the discussions around course evaluations and their problematic nature, those of us working at an R1 university will not be judged on teaching alone. Generally, teaching is not what makes or breaks the tenure and promotion cases at these schools. And, so, as an institution, we are not in agreement on the purposes of such evaluation and feedback, leaving us to guess what it means to "meet" or "exceed" expectations.
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