Korean Job Discussion Forums

[bassexpander]

This is somewhat petty for a professor to do... heard this today, and got a kick out of it.

My friend's university has students complete an online form evaluating their instructor before they are allowed to see their grades. My friend always likes to read the comments as they come in, and see how the students respond to various questions about his class and performance.

This semester, instructors have been blocked from viewing the information until the week after the last possible change date of posted grades. When my friend said why, I had to snicker...

Some professors (Korean -- could have been any major) were tracking the negative comments and dropping overall grades of students/classes in retribution.

Pretty hilarious (and sad).

[Hanson]

(just because theres no "shake your head knowingly" emoticon)

[Yu_Bum_suk]

[earthbound14]

No wonder my students kiss my butt so much in class....and I thought I was just that handsome.

They should make an entire university degree out of butt kissing and brown nosing, its an integral part of getting ahead in Korean society.

Those students really messed up in the brown nosing department (if only they had taken the class)...they should have waited until the last possible day to post negative things about the prof....I know I wait till the last possible day to post any grade less than an A.....

[HapKi]

It works both ways, and I think its good.
Students can't see their final grades when they do their Teacher Eval's. - and teachers can't see the Teacher Evals till after they post grades.

[earthbound14]

[Demophobe]

[bluelake]

My last and current universities do the same. Also, my current university freezes out a prof from even looking at the grades s/he gave until the week for changes (next week), while my last one would let you make changes up until a certain date.

With all that said, I think Korea puts too much emphasis on student evals in terms of profs' jobs. If you get some students who get a burr up their bonnet about something, they could really hand you your rear (and it DOES happen and the students know they have that power). Some profs get low evals not because they are bad, but because they are sometime a bit tough on students (expecting them to actually learn something ). A couple of my best profs were ones I wasn't particularly fond of. On the other side of the coin, some profs get good evals not because they are such great teachers, but because they won a popularity contest.

I think student evals should be considered, but only secondarily to other factors.