Joho the Blog
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July 08, 2006
Liz thinks systems that let students rank professors tend to be skewed, unreliable and nasty ... and important. An interesting discussion follows. It's a problem. There are lots of reasons to be disappointed in a professor, including some that don't actually reflect on the teacher as a teacher. Some courses that are unpleasant experiences may yet be worthwhile. So what do you do? The systems seemingly have to be anonymous if they're to work, although one of Liz's commenters suggests tying them into social networks. Having them structured more like discussion boards so that students can respond to one another's comments might help. More metadata about the students might enable a system to note that a particular professor is rated low by science majors but high by humanities majors, low by women but high by mean, and maybe even low by C students but high by A students (??). The truth is, I don't really know what might help. [Tags: liz_lawley teaching social_software ] Posted
by D. Weinberger at July 8, 2006 07:16 AM
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Comments
I'm torn. In principle I agree very strongly with the commenter on Liz's site who concludes
"Having a voice and having anonymity - pick one";
I've been online since 1996 and never used a pseudonym for anything except occasional game-playing. And yes, keeping comments anonymous is a sure way to bring out the worst in [some] people - look at the Guardian's "Comment is free" blogs, if you can stand it.
And yet. Students don't stay students forever; some of them are going to turn into colleagues. Back in my postgrad days I gave somebody a bad writeup, because I felt that the way they were teaching was geared less to getting knowledge across than to making a good impression on the class. I think it was a perfectly valid criticism; I also think there's a high probability that this person will have worked out who said what, and a very low probability that they'll ever be inclined to do me any favours. Which, when you're (officially) an Early Career Researcher, is not ideal.
Speaking truth to power is laudable, all the more so if you're doing it under your own name (or, in my case, in your own handwriting). It's just that sometimes it's not very sensible. Anonymity is a work-around, but ultimately I agree with Liz that it creates more problems than it solves. So what does that leave?
Posted by: Phil | July 10, 2006 05:44 AM