Thursday, December 2, 2010

UVM SGA Suggests Evaluation Boycott

Since it seems like this is a pertinent topic at UVM, I figured that I would throw my opinion in regarding the boycott of course evaluations. Sorry that it does not relate to sports. Honestly, I do not quite see the success that it seemed like the Student Government Association anticipated. Of course, with 769 votes in on Facebook (which is not a very large portion of the University of Vermont and possibly not very representative), there are more people who are not participating than those who are. That definitely will not make much of a difference for the administration. Do I think that they should be published? I do believe that it would be nice to see evaluations of a class. However, I think that a boycott is the wrong way to do it. As I have noticed on the Facebook event, it seems as if the SGA position is to boycott everything on the evaluation except for the comment section where students are free to answer in their own words. I guess my main problem is professors don't only read the comments. I would find it very weird if the professor did not look at the rest of the evaluation if he or she took the time to look at the evaluations at all. Perhaps some professors don't even look at or care about the evaluations. Giving us access to the evaluations will not change that. The evaluations will not change anything if the professors don't look at them. I do believe that most professors if not all do look at the course evaluations however. Therefore, I think that they are becoming a target to an issue that the SGA has with administration rather than with the professors directly. Most professors do not have a say over whether or not the evaluations are released. If I were a professor, I know any information that I could gather from my students, even those how much do you agree with this statement questions, would be coveted. And just one more sidenote I noticed on many comments, if ratemyprofessors.com is to polarized, go online and do something about it. Write your own reviews and make it a better site. Don't complain that other people have ruined it, make it better.
Photo by zappowbang on Flickr

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