and more

First, off, Joel: not too creeped. I think - if I remember rightly - I once commented on your blog under my 'alternate identity.' And I have pix up there. And I have a flickr page with pix of me on it.

Otherwise, you used your Mad Internet Skillz to search my name and find my (not very good) picture on the website of the place where I teach. (There are other people out there with my actual name: one was a murder victim. It's strange and creepy to be reading a story on an unsolved murder and find the victim had the same name as you do.)

Or you peeped in on my "posting-from" code (the number-code all computers logged on to the internet) and backtraced it to figure out where I'm at. Well, that's a little creepy. But I don't consider you a stalker nor do I consider you someone who'd want to try to sabotage me, so I don't worry too much about it. (I just hope I'd have warning if I thought someone was thinking of sabotaging me so I could do some quick removal and such)

Whatevah. Just as long as no one's pulling a Kathy Sierra on me, I'm cool with it.

( I don't presume I'm totally anonymous but I tend to presume I'm pretty obscure, and might also have deniability as I tend to heavily alter a lot of the stories I report here)


*****

I had one of the class evaluations today. As I walked out of the class (We're supposed to be gone when it happens; I suppose that's so the students feel freer to express what's in their inmost hearts), I heard the person in charge of the evaluation say something like, "The blank paper is for your comments, so you can say what you liked and didn't like about the class."

And I cringed a little. Oh, I know, she's been doing these all week and she's tired of them, but: Telling me what you liked about my class may stroke my ego, but it's not all that useful to me. Better to tell me what was useful to you about the class, what topics were valuable, if the way I taught it helped you. And the "didn't like" part is the same - what good does it do an instructor to be told his or her class "sucked"? (Never happened to me but a friend of mine showed me his evaluations once.)

And as per the Singaporean instructor in the You Tube video I posted: If I talk too fast, please tell me RIGHT THEN. Don't simmer about it all semester and then write a screed on my evaluation about how I always talked too fast. I am a reasonable and approachable person, and I think that comes across. I am not going to give you an F for stopping me after class one day and going, "Hey, could you slow down a little? I can't get everything."

If we're going to improve, we need specific data. (And even then, I'm not sure how useful end-of-the-term assessments are. True story: in one class I teach, one semester I got several comments saying, "Don't just evaluate us on tests, we want homework too!" So I instituted biweekly (short) homeworks. That semester, people wrote on evaluations: "The homeworks are KILLING us! It is too much work for this class!")

I dunno. Sometimes I think the university sets up this idea that the prof-student dynamic is much more of a power relationship than it really is: that the students don't DARE comment on the prof's teaching except in anonymous evaluations (or to their own buddies in the hall - or for that matter, to other profs. I've heard my share of gripes by students about my colleagues, which always makes me uncomfortable - do I pass the info on - as in "a student - I'm not going to say who - said this" or treat it as confidential?) Maybe for some profs that's true- maybe some would grade down a student for telling them they spoke too fast, or their exams are too long (though a good prof should be able to judge this - if no one's done by the end of the period). But I wouldn't. Maybe the students don't know that but I just don't like the whole anonymous-end-of-term setup - because the end of the term is when it's too late to fix things, and it's also when any lingering resentments come out.