Continuing from Part 1 of our Lecturer Teaching Evaluation (LTE) discussion. Here are some ‘insights’ I received from informal talks with my students and my observation.
Some students feared that lecturers may penalize them for giving a bad mark. I personally had to show the class the online system, to convince them that I cannot see who answered and who didn’t, and who wrote what. A student once asked, “Can’t the management get to the information? After all they may have the privilege to do so.“. To which I answered emphatically, ” They are ethical people who will not do so. Besides, being Muslims, we are ethical people.“. **Note: The student was a Muslim boy, so I took the opportunity to do some dakwah as well. This does not imply that non-Muslims are not ethical.
Students feel that they need to fill in too many of these forms, as they have to do it to all their subjects in the semester and every semester. Some students don’t really bother at all, or if they do they just click all the ‘3’ in the form and leave no comments or just a ‘-‘. A few students even told me that if they don’t care for (read: don’t like) the lecturer, they do the same.
Some students give high marks to lecturers that tell them to do so. A few students said that some lecturers ask them to click all ‘4’ or ‘5’; and don’t need to leave a comment. This is where I thought of ‘ethics’ and prayed for guidance.
I observed that the LTE marks are often poor if it is done right after assessments, for example a test or presentation, especially where the students did poorly. This is the time when they vent their frustrations. I actually like to do so, as I believe that the decision to use this evaluation as part of a tool to measure performance is highly suspect.
**More in Part 3: My views on this.
