As the final weeks of the semester sneak up on us, so do all of the annoying things that accompany the end of the school year: exam stress, papers and, of course, teacher evaluations.
Since some teacher evaluations changed from paper to online in recent years,USC has seen a dramatic drop in student participation rates. As irksome as they are to us, teacher evaluations are necessary for professors. In order to gauge their performance from year to year, modify their teaching styles or apply for tenure, professors have to know what students think. But most professors don’t take adequate time to explain the necessity of the evaluations to students, something they should consider doing in the future.
But let’s be real; careful explanations themselves still won’t be enough to keep students from deleting those annoying reminder emails from their inboxes. If USC wants an effective system, it has to find a way to make student participation mandatory. It could do so, for example, by not releasing students’ grades for individual classes onto VIP until the teacher evaluations for their classes are completed.
Right now, USC is entertaining the idea of publicizing evaluation results, essentially creating something like a USC version of Rate My Professor, which would also be a good idea. A publicized forum would help students during the class registration process as well as give students incentive to share their experience with others.
Teacher evaluations are important, but as college students, we can be lazy. If USC wants results, then it should seriously consider changing the system so evaluations are just as important to students as they are to our professors.