Every semester around this time, students across campus pull out their No. 2 pencils to fill out instructor evaluation forms. Often, they are handed out 30 seconds after class ends, forcing you to choose between criticizing the professor who has made your life miserable all semester and making it to your next class on time.
What we often lose sight of in the shuffle, however, is the importance of these evaluation forms – they are an important effort on the university’s behalf to improve overall instructor quality. But because students evaluate professors at the end of the term, their feedback has little bearing on their own classroom experiences.
It would be more helpful to both the faculty and to students themselves to complete evaluation forms in the middle of the semester, as well. This would give faculty members the opportunity to see how current students truly feel about course content and teaching style. Moreover, it would give students a greater incentive to write thorough evaluations, as they would have an immediate stake in the potential results.
Of course, in order for these midterm evaluations to have the intended effect, they would need to be collected and organized more efficiently. An electronic system would encourage more student feedback and would avoid lost class time.
Halfway through the semester, students complete midterm examinations to gain a sense of their performance before finals. If students were only evaluated once per semester – on the final exam – they would be far less likely to improve. Professors at Georgetown should be given the same opportunity, in order to adjust to their students’ needs.
Though we support the university’s faculty evaluation system, we encourage officials to adopt a midterm evaluation in the interest of increasing the forms’ accuracy and depth. Teaching quality at Georgetown can only benefit as a result.
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