By Elianna Novitch
The University of Iowa Student Government passed a resolution on Tuesday to make classroom evaluation results public so students can access them.
The resolution means that UISG supports open evaluations. From here, the initiative must go through a few more steps before it can be completed.
Students have the option to fill out an Assessing the Classroom Environment evaluation at the end of each semester for each of their classes. As of now, the results of the evaluations are only available to UI faculty and administration.
According to the Information Technology Services website, the online evaluation system “collects student opinions about a course or instructor and provides a standard set of summary result.”
“Each college has different people who have access, but most commonly, associate deans and directors have access,” said Annette Beck, the ITS director of enterprise instructional technology. “There are a few administrative assistants in departments who have access to help facilitate the process. Faculty evaluations are a small part of the tenure and promotion process, and they also serve a small [human-resources] capacity.”
UISG members voted in favor of a resolution that supports publishing the results of the evaluations publicly.
“The main goal is to give feedback to instructors to help facilitate more effective teaching and student learning,” Beck said.
The proposal for the resolution came from the UISG Academic Affairs Committee.
“It’s something we have been working on for a while. The past administration tried to do this,” said panel head Chloe Cable. “The idea is to publish the responses of these evaluation forms so that students can see it and see what people say about the classes and professor in case they are considering taking it.”
At present, the only options that students have to get this kind of information about professors is from such websites as ratemyprofessor.com.
“Those websites can be problematic because of bias based on things such as the hotness scale,” Cable said. “We really want to have a more UI-focused database on which people can give criticism on classes after they have taken them for future students to see and so that faculty can evaluate their own courses.”
Students are not required to use the evaluations. UISG hopes if students had access to the results of the evaluations, there would be an increase in participation at the end of the semester.
“I think it will play an important role in fostering student success to be able to think critically about classes you will be successful in and what professors you can learn well from based on the data these evaluations can give to students,” said Lindsey Rayner, a member of the Academic Affairs Committee.
Though the resolution passed, there is still work to be done.
“This is just a step in the process” Cable said. “We are nowhere near done. We can’t say yet how this will look, but it is something that we are working with faculty on, and we want it to be a collaborative effort. We want more transparency between what goes on with faculty and administration for students.”
