OUR OPINION: Besides our performance in professors’ classes, online evaluations are the only way to examine instructors’ ability to teach, and therefore, we should make filling the evaluations out a top priority before the end of the semester.
By now, we all have nice little e-mails in our inboxes requesting that we fill out our end-of-year course evaluations. If you’ve already deleted it, the Web site address is http://classeval.ncsu.edu.
This new method of gathering information about professor performances couldn’t be more convenient and easy to access. The old system, which incorporated golf pencils and bubble sheets, was inefficient and time consuming.
When you visit the new evaluation Web site, all of your courses are listed, and you simply click each individual link and fill out similar questions to the ones on the outdated paper versions.
Basically, you select a few bubbles, write a few comments about your professor and the course, and you’re done. In fact, if you have four or five classes, it will probably take you less time to fill them all out online than one in the classroom.
So, take advantage of this. You can’t take the stance that you will never have to take that course again and since the evaluations have no affect on your grade, it won’t matter if you don’t fill it out.
If every student engaged in that sort of logic, then we would have no way of informing instructors on how they should improve — not to mention, you won’t have a way of knowing what professors to avoid in the future.
We admit, the new system isn’t perfect; for instance, results should be made readily available to everyone the second all final grades are sealed and submitted, but nonetheless, the results, once released, are invaluable.
Professors like to joke that course evaluations are the only way to get back at them, and to an extent, we should take that sentiment pretty seriously.
If enough students fill out evaluations, particularly in the system’s inaugural year, then perhaps the University won’t have to make them a requirement to get our grades released in the future.
The University shouldn’t have to hold our hands — we are responsible adults, so let’s take some initiative, log onto the evaluations’ Web site and give some useful, honest feedback.
The ability to evaluate courses online is a valuable tool, but like any other tool — it’s no good if it goes unused.
