Mary C. Henry

I think most of us in academia complain about teaching evaluations in one way or another and many articles have been written on the problems with student evaluation of instruction. Since we made the switch to online evaluations another problem is low response rates. Some faculty have "tricks" that they claim work: offering extra credit if a certain response rate is reached, threatening not to grade exams if a certain response rate is NOT reached, giving in-class time to fill them out. I've tried some of these but the rates are still quite low. For online classes it's even worse. So on top of the other issues with student evaluation of teaching, there may not be enough data either. At my university, they encourage us to use "multiple measures of teaching effectiveness" in the form of midterm evaluations of some kind. I have used Small Group Instructional Diagnosis several times to get feedback on what is and isn't working in classes. This semester I...

Commencement was 56 days ago and Fall classes start in 51 days, so we're definitely in the middle of summer now. I was happy to realize that we're still only halfway through since I'm enjoying having a break from teaching after literally no break at all since January 2nd*. I taught j-term online (totally voluntary and for extra pay), then my usual load in spring, then I also taught the first summer session online (also voluntary and for extra pay). With our current calendar there is no break between j-term and spring or between spring and first summer session. I volunteered for both since I can always use the money (my daughter has one more year before starting college!) Having no breaks between sessions mean that grades for one term are not even due when the next one starts(!) So it's a lot and I'm thankful for the break. But, what about the students? I'm sure we have a lot of students who took courses during all three of those sessions, too. And many take mo...