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KANSAN.COM/NEWS | THURSDAY, DEC. 8, 2016
Kansan staff
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ADVISERS
Chief financial officer Jon Schlitt
Editorial adviser Gerri Berendzen
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Where do your course evaluations go?
CHANDLER BOESE
@Chandler_Boese
A around this time of the year, students are being evaluated in a lot of ways: papers, presentations, take-home finals, exams and more. It's also this time of the year that students get a chance to give feedback to their instructors through course evaluations.
The University has one standard policy for the administration of the evaluations, but each department comes up with its own practices for using them. Most of these policies are contained in the online policy library as "faculty evaluation plans."
But there are definitely standard practices for using the evaluations, said Mary Lee Hummert, the vice provost for faculty development. After an instructor puts in grades, the evaluations are returned to them for their own use, a practice mandated by the Board of Regents.
But after the evaluations are administered -the instructor gives students notice, asks for a volunteer to take the sheets and leaves the room -the use of those evaluations is largely at the discretion of individual departments.
"If I'm in a class where I really don't think the teacher was an effective teacher, I'm going to say that and I'm going to say the specific reason why, because if the class sucked for me, it's going to suck for whoever takes it after me, and I really don't want other students to have to go through the same thing," Katherine Riedel, a sophomore from Olathe, said. "On the flip side, if a teacher did a really, really great job, I want them to be able to be recognized from that and get acknowledgement."
Photo illustration by Missy Minear
"So you see, as a faculty member, how your students evaluated your teaching on the nine items that are part of the course evaluations," Hummert said. "What we really emphasize is using them as feedback and trying to address areas in which the feedback suggests you could work on improving what you're doing."
Summaries of the evaluations are also included in promotion and tenure decisions, Hummert said. The summaries are usually norm-referenced, meaning that they're given in comparison with similar level courses in the same department.
"Mainly because there are some types of courses, like those [which] are required of a lot of students who aren't majors [theteachers of which] could potentially be perceived less positively than the 500-level courses in which only a small group of majors enroll," she said. "So, it makes a fair comparison of a person's teaching effectiveness to make a comparison other people taking similar courses in the same discipline."
Even in just looking at an instructor's teaching, there are other ways to measure their effectiveness, Hummert said. Students can tell a lot of things about instructors, such as how they communicate with students or show them respect. But there are limitations to a student's perspective, Hummert said, limitations even she has experienced as a student.
But the information that is considered in promotion includes much more than just student evaluations. Faculty members are typically evaluated in terms of not only their teaching, but also their research and service.
One decision that's entirely up to the department, Hummert said, is to what degree the department will look at the qualitative data on the course evaluations.
"What I don't know, necessarily, is if I'm being exposed to the latest literature, are the curriculum materials top of the line in terms of what is the highest standard in this discipline. That's when the perspective of my colleagues in the department come in," she said.
"According to the Board of Regents, we can also have open-ended questions that students can maybe give you some feedback on what they particularly liked or suggestions for improvement, but those are for the individual faculty members or the school says that the written comments are part of the personnel file, too," she said.
Riedel said she hopes that most departments look at the written comments,
as those are a much better measure of an instructor's success.
"The ones where we circle things in, it's easier for students who don't really care to B.S. it ... and it's harder to get across a point on how I think a teacher performed that semester," she said. "If you can write it out, I feel like you can better explain what the specific issues are, whereas if you're filling in the bubble for a generic thing, you don't get to voice any actual concerns."
Often, departments also emphasize improvement in its evaluations over the individual course results, Hummert said.
"I would want to, over a six-year period before I went up for a promotion, show continued attention and improvement and show that I paid attention to the students," she said. "You can see that we're showing a real dedication to teaching and developing students and ensuring that they're learning."
Some of these expectations can be seen in the policies. For example, the Department of Communication asks for instructors
Geography professor dispels myths about marijuana legalization
MONA AHMED
@KansonNews
Barnev Warf, a geography professor at the University, discusses the legalization of marijuana. Ashley Hocking/KANSAN
Ashley Hocking/KANSAN
arilina
Four states might have legalized marijuana this year, but according to geography professor Barney Warf, it's unlikely that Kansas will allow the controversial drug.
Warf recently wrote a book, "High Points: An Historical Geography of Cannabis," which addresses the topic from both a historical and geographic standpoint.
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Warf started researching cannabis 15 years ago. He said he was motivated by the high number of arrests associated with marijuana.
"Hundreds of thousands of people or millions of peoples' lives have been damaged for arrest of cannabis. There are people in Texas who are doing life sentence for cannabis possession," Warf said. "And I just found that was completely unfair. And it became a matter of social justice and I am very concerned about social justice and inequality."
Warf's book describes the various kinds of cannabis and its uses. He said he thinks there are many misconceptions regarding marijuana.
"There are a lot of erroneous stereotypes and disinformation about cannabis. One of them is that it leads to hallucinations. It does not," he said. "Cannabis produces a mild euphoria and it often stimulates sexual desires and appetite. It enhances most peoples' pleasurability to listening to music and conversation and things like that."
Another misconception, Warf said, is that marijuana is addictive. While there are certain addicting qualities, Warf said it is not as powerful as other legal drugs, like nicotine.
There are not any other professors in the University's geography department who
study cannabis, but Stefan Kertesz, from the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, highlighted the differences between nicotine and marijuana.
"Nicotine is highly addictive and most persons who smoke cigarettes develop a diagnosable addiction to them...nicotine interacts with the brain in very complicated ways, but many addiction scientists would draw the conclusion that it is ultimately somewhat more addictive than the compounds in marijuana," Kertesz said in an email.
Although many health organizations warn about marijuana, Warf said he is
hesitant to trust them.
"There are temporary effects. It has been shown to impair short term memory in the short run as a temporary phenomenon. It also depresses hearing a little bit. Those going away once the THC is mitigated in the blood stream," Warf said. "I don't think there is any convincing evidence that it has long term negative effects."
Although it seems to be becoming more normalized, Warf said he thinks the legalization in Kansas is far off.
"Kansas is too conservative and troglodyte of a state to legalize cannabis," Warf said.
to submit a written statement as to how they used the evaluations to improve. Other policies, like the math department's, call for "systematic" evaluations results, as opposed to individual comments.
Overall, Hummert thinks the policies put a lot of faith in instructors to improve their own teaching, something she believes the University's faculty members excel at doing.
"We have an increased emphasis and appreciation for the importance of undergraduate teaching at this institution and have really increased our efforts to support faculty members in adopting the most effective and innovative approaches to increasing student engagement in the classroom, because we all know that's where learning really takes place," she said.
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