student evaluations - why did I look?

[Noreen Claire]

This was my first time as an adjunct professor. I taught three sections of the same course, which was essentially a review of algebra 1 & 2 topics. My evaluations from my students were posted today. Roughly 60% of my students filled out the evaluations and they were, for the most part, good.

But, one student wrote: 

"I always felt lost in this class and unable to ask for help. I felt as though (she) was judgmental and not the most helpful when it came to doing our individual work."

And now I have a pit in my stomach and I want to cry. 

 

Edited December 21, 2018 by Noreen Claire

[Farrar]

😞 I'm sorry.

Do you feel like you were available and made overtures to the class to come get help? If so, I think you should just assume that kid was projecting their own sense of failure on you instead of owning it and try to let it go.

If you are now looking back thinking you should have done more to reach out to students or set it up so that they could ask questions, then learn from it and go into your next class ready to make that change.

[DawnM]

We don't connect with everyone.....unfortunately,.

Edited December 21, 2018 by DawnM

[EmseB]

If that is the only one like that, then you need to let it roll off. Do the best you can to be available, but if no one else is writing anything like that it is probably someone that is unwilling to take responsibility for their grade in the class. Especially with the ad hominem thrown in there.

[Rachel]

If you just had one student that felt that way, that’s great. There’s a huge chance he or she would have written the same evaluation for any teacher. 

I hate criticism of any sort, so I can see why it’s upsetting, but please don’t dwell on it. 

[Garga]

That stings. 😞. But I agree with everyone else to let this go. After a day or two, the initial sting will wear off and you can better put this in perspective.  If you think the response was at all valid, then you can make corrections for future classes.  This was your first time, so having only one complaint (that may or may not be valid)  is excellent.  

[katilac]

They say they "felt . . . unable to ask for help" which implies they did NOT ask for help. That's on them. If they asked for help and you blew them off or skipped office hours, that would be on you. 

[Tanaqui]

That hurts. I get it.

Put it away and don't think about it until the New Year. Then open it up again and consider it in context. Was it the only negative comment? If so, then quite likely this student is projecting - they felt unable to ask for help, so they blamed you for their feelings.

On the other hand, if other comments said or suggested anything like this then it's a learning experience. Obviously you're not gonna be an expert adjunct the first class you teach! Look at your teaching methods and speak to other teachers about your teaching, see if they can offer specific pointers that can mitigate this in the future.

Either way, try to keep the perspective in mind: You'll never get a 100% approval rating. You go on Amazon, look up any classic or bestseller and there's always somebody giving one star and ranting that they don't understand how somebody can read this tripe. Absolutely nobody and nothing can ever be universally loved - so a single negative review is no big in the grand scheme of things.

[Noreen Claire]

FTR I was a high school teacher previous to staying home after DS6 was born and I started homeschooling. But, in public high school, they don't let the kids evaluate you. 

I'm not teaching next semester, so I'm going to set myself a reminder to review the evaluations at the end of the summer and then try to not think about them again until then. They were, on the whole, positive comments. This one hurt, though. 

Thanks, everyone, for your kind words and reasoned voices.

[Suzanne in ABQ]

I just want to add that many, many young people entering college just can't get themselves to ask for help, go to office hours, raise their hand, whatever.  Both of my college kids had a really hard time with this.  I'm not sure what causes it.  They both eventually got over it and realized that it is in their best interest to ask questions and advocate for themselves.  It's part of college.  It's part of "adulting".  It's not high school.  

I'm not sure what your student meant by "she wasn't always helpful when it came to doing our individual work", but I don't believe that it is your job, as a professor, to do their individual work, or to seek them out to make sure they do it, or to spoon-feed them in any way.  It is the student's job to do the work, and to seek help if they don't understand it, the earlier in the semester, the better.

[J-rap]

I also wanted to add that like all types of reviews, you have to look at the majority message.  If I'm looking up a hotel review and 18 out of 20 say a place is fantastic but 2 say they'd never stay there again, I generally conclude that it's probably a good hotel.  Unfortunately, 2 had a bad experience, but either the customers themselves had unusual expectations/reactions or else flukey unfortunate events occurred when they stayed there which generally don't happen.

[regentrude]

Hugs. I know exactly how the one bad review can make you forget about a whole bunch of good ones. So, try to focus on the good ones.

I have been teaching for 17 years. Usually get very good evals. But in every single section there will be comments side-by-side "great communication skills" and "cannot communicate at all", "most caring professor I ever met" and "does not care about students". There is absolutely nothing you can do about this other than let it roll off your back. Focus on the recurring comments and constructive suggestions, see if there is a theme, and then put it behind you. Best wishes!

[G5052]

I've been an adjunct for 21 years come January. My very first department head warned me multiple times to look at the overall TREND of comments versus specific ones. In those days they were handwritten evaluations that I received at the beginning of the next semester.

RateMyProfessor online is the same. I'm highly rated, but have some real zingers in there from people I dropped per the college rules. The school I work for now requires that you drop students at certain points for not keeping up. 

The college I work for now does all numbers. I personally don't find that at all helpful, but that's how they handle it.

Then they do a very deep review of every aspect of one course you taught every other year. I got a lot of valuable feedback from that.

Certainly you can't please everyone. When I did stand up technical training, it was the same. Everything from "best course ever" to "my employer got cheated."

[skimomma]

Really, try not to let it get to you.  I have 13 years under my belt and it took a few years to let those random terrible comments go.  Even in my very first year teaching, the bad comments did not actually speak to my very real newbie weaknesses.  Now I find it amusing as, like others have said, the stingy comments are almost always paired by an exact opposite comment from another student.  I find lots of useful feedback in the comments but the outlier negative comments are almost always students with an ax to grind. I still don't have the stomach for Rate My Professor.  I do not look at that one anymore.  Luckily, the students at my school report that they do not find RMP very helpful unless they are seeking specific information.  General rants are taken as non-reliable according to the TAs I have had over the years.

[sheryl]

Aww, don't beat yourself up over this.  Dawn said it best.  I'll also say that no one is best for everyone.  We all have different learning styles.  Maybe that was the issue.  I'm sure you were excellent for most of the students.  One student is not really a good indicator of another's performance.  

[Granny_Weatherwax]

I'm feeling for you. I stopped looking at my evaluations three years in; I figured if an issue arose, my dean would notify me immediately. I, too, would focus on the negative comments (because there always will be a negative comment) and not enjoy the positive ones. Since the adjuncts at my CC shared an office, topics such as this would arise. I was always amazed at the adjuncts who could slough off the negative comments while I would be dying inside.

[elegantlion]

This was my first semester as a TA. I won't see reviews until spring. I was sort of relieved because I didn't want to spend my break overthinking negative comments. 

If you held office hours and offered to aid struggling students, then the onus was on this student to seek help. I'm certainly not a mind reader, so I don't know who is struggling, who is totally apathetic, or who is just have a huge ton of chaos in their lives. 

 

 

[Bootsie]

When you get comments like that it does hurt.  I have been teaching at the college level for over 30 years, and it still stings when I read comments like that.  Sometimes I do wonder if two students were sitting in the same classroom because I will get one that says "always available for help" and the another that says "never available for help", etc.  One of the most helpful things for me to keep in mind is what my advisor said to me when I was in grad school looking at my first set of teaching evaluations.  I had the highest evaluations of any PhD student, but was focused on some especially stinging comments from a student.  The advisor told me that his radar goes up if there are no negative comments and that he finds that the best teachers have a handful of students who do not like them.  He said that you have to have a strong enough personality to be a great teacher that it is going to rub some people the wrong way.  

Another thing to keep in mind is that "evaluate" is a higher-order skill.  It is a complex task that people in HR spend a great deal of time learning, fine-tuning, and practicing.  Studies show that many college students lack the ability to evaluate effectively and is one of the things they are in college to learn.  So, these student evaluations are often more opinion based upon emotion than a true evaluation. 

 

[regentrude]

2 hours ago, The Accidental Coach said:

 I was always amazed at the adjuncts who could slough off the negative comments while I would be dying inside.

Can it be they've just been more experienced? For the first years, I took every comment to heart. Over the years and literally thousands of students, I have learned that you really cannot please everybody, and also that not every comment has a basis in fact. Sometimes students claim ridiculous things that are flat out incorrect: every semester, I have students in my online section who complain I am doing extra problems in the live section, which is complete nonsense - I don't have time in the live section, and I actually provide more problems online. But they will swear how unfair that is that the in-class get extra material.  WTH?

 

[regentrude]

5 minutes ago, Bootsie said:

  Sometimes I do wonder if two students were sitting in the same classroom because I will get one that says "always available for help" and the another that says "never available for help", etc. 

Right, isn't that the weirdest thing? You'd think they have completely different instructors! It never ceases to amaze me.

[Andromeda]

1 hour ago, regentrude said:

Right, isn't that the weirdest thing? You'd think they have completely different instructors! It never ceases to amaze me.

 

The thing is, they do get different instructors. 🙂 If you read my student reviews, you would definitely think so. How could a single person be both caring, attentive, supportive, etc. while being unapproachable, unwilling to work with the student, or lacking in some other way?

I usually start out a term by telling students how much I hated going to office hours and that I almost never raised a hand with a question for fear of appearing stupid. Sometimes it helps and encourages some of them to come out of their shells, but I can't make them come to me with a question. They need to advocate for themselves.

 I usually have a handful of students in each class who take the initiative to connect with me, and they tend to do well. This term I've had several with truly awful real life circumstances, but they kept in touch nearly every week, and we were able to work together to get them back on track. They are all going to get high grades. I also have several who dropped off the face of the Earth for several weeks and then came in expecting special treatment. I can see some of those students writing a poor review, but their grades will be entirely due to their lack of attendance or putting in any sort of effort. So yea, these two groups definitely got different instructors.

ETA

Departments are used to seeing these sorts of negative reviews. As long as it's an outlier and not a trend, you have nothing to worry about.

Edited December 21, 2018 by RosemaryAndThyme