As the fall semester winds down, students are once again asked to fill out professor and teaching assistant evaluation forms and are often left wondering exactly what purpose these evaluations serve.
According to French professor Sally Magnan, each department at UW-Madison has their own evaluation procedure.
For several departments on campus, finished evaluations forms are sent immediately to the department office. According to professor Graham Wilson, Political Science Department chair, 'Forms are distributed in all courses, collected by students and returned directly to office staff with no access to them by professors and TAs.'
In some departments, such as English and French, the forms are then sent to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Office of Testing and Evaluation Services to be calculated.
'They are scored by Testing and Evaluation so that we get statistics for individuals and across the department,' Magnan said.
According to Interim Director of T&E Char Tortorice, T&E deals only with the calculation of the numerical ratings students give instructors. The written comments on some forms are handled differently within each department. Some departments on campus do not utilize the T&E at all.
'It is always the question, 'Would a professor judge me differently if they know I had written something about them either positive or negative'? So those open-ended comments always do leave people concerned.' Tortorice said. 'But every department has a way of dealing with it.'
In the French Department, instructors can review their evaluations after the final grades have been submitted, Magnan said.
Administratively, evaluation can be used for a number of purposes within a department.
'Evaluations play a crucial role in tenure decisions, nominations for faculty awards and promotions and merit pay increases,' Wilson said.
English Department Chair Professor Michael Bernard-Donals said the evaluations are most importantly used as a resource for instructors to improve their teaching.
'The [written] comments are just priceless for [improving teaching] because they really do give a sense to a teacher about what worked and what didn't,' Bernard-Donals said.
Bernard-Donals said if an English Department instructor receives especially low evaluations for a course, the department chair discusses the problem with the instructor.
'Most of the time it turns out this is a younger instructor who just doesn't have a lot of experience teaching,' Bernard-Donals said. 'We find a way to give that professor assistance for the next time they teach that course.'
All departments agreed it is crucial for students to fill out evaluations of professors and teaching assistants.
According to Magnan, 'Evaluations are the major voice of students in updating and evaluating our courses.'
