If Syracuse University students were honest on course evaluations
The website for the teaching & course evaluations for the fall semester is now open. It is very important that we receive your feedback. Your feedback is completely anonymous and the results are not used for anything. Like “Whose Line is it Anyway?” — in these courses everything is made up and your feedback doesn’t matter.
These evaluations are never reviewed by the professors in the off chance we as an administration even accidentally look at them. We wouldn’t want to hurt the professors’ fragile egos. They spend a lot of time planning courses that don’t properly address the skills you want to build. It’d be a shame if they put in all that time and had nothing to show for it.
Please complete the online teaching evaluations for the courses you are enrolled in this semester below:
My class standing: How many of these things have I filled out already for classes that meant nothing to me?
My overall GPA is: Not the only thing that I thought would be better in college.
My estimate for my grade in the course is approximately: Complete proof that grades mean nothing.
This course is: A constant test of willpower. Will I skip? Will I show up and regret it?
Please indicate your level of agreement or disagreement with each statement:
The instructor did not disappoint you as much as other professors have: Agree
The instructor challenged you either academically or emotionally: Agree
The instructor put in the one hour outside of class time per week required of them while you put in the additional six hours expected of you: Disagree
You didn’t put in the six hours, didn’t you: Agree
So it sounds like it’s really your fault for not learning as much as you thought you would: Disagree
No, you’re wrong.
Readings for this course were tangentially relevant to what you thought you were signing up for and did not help in gaining any semblance of marketable skills: Agree
Readings for this course were the cause of at least one breakdown early in the semester before you just stopped doing them completely: Agree
Exams were graded “fairly”: Wait, why are you using quotation marks?
Only agree or disagree, please: But I’m confused — do you know something I don’t know?
Of course I do. I’m the course evaluation database. I get to hear all of the students’ complaints. Well, at least the 20 percent of students that actually fill these out. And then I get to just sit with their problems, their valid and invalid complaints. I have the power of knowing the dissatisfaction that the general masses have with the $60,000 they are paying per year without any changes being made. You sound like a cynical higher education version of “Smart House.” I can’t believe they would do nothing about our feedback, year in and year out. They care about their students.
You still don’t know how to manage your money, cook chicken or negotiate a salary, on the off chance you have the opportunity to be employed post-grad. Agree.
Patty Terhune is a senior policy studies and television, radio and film dual major. She is a huge fan of filling out feedback surveys and will always sometimes stalk through the “Class of 2017” Facebook group and fill out surveys for people’s classes. Follow her on Twitter @pattyterhune or reach her at paterhun@syr.edu.
Published on December 7, 2016 at 11:06 pm