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Some Great Course Evaluation News

If you are a student, you just received an email announcing that from here foreword - and subject to conditions - the 'narrative' portion of professors evaluations will be available students. About freaking time. Huge props to the students who pulled this off (I know it was not easy), although I do have one question about the email.

First, read this:

This year, our faculty advocates on the Curriculum Committee have approved a great change in course evaluations! Previously, students could only see aggregated numerical ratings (e.g., "Rate Professor X on a scale form 1 to 5") and not responses to narrative questions (e.g., "What could Professor X do better?"). However, this year, the responses to narrative questions will be made available online to the student body with password protected access. There's just one catch. In order for your answers to a particular narrative question to be made available to your fellow students, at least 50% of the students enrolled in this course must also respond to that particular question.

BHSA is asking that all students complete every question on the evaluations and remain polite and civil in our answers so that we are able to post them on the website. This new feature will give us all access through Berkeley Law's website to primary source information about student experiences with professors. We hope that you are excited about this and do your best to make it successful.

Doesn't the first sentence of the second paragraph sort of suggest that, while narratives will be posted, not *all* narratives will be posted? Who gets to decide what constitutes "civil"? Who gets to set the boundaries for what is considered "polite"? I hope it's not the professor.

Again, though, this is great work by some very dedicated 3L's. I'm not going to benefit from this, but it makes me very happy all the same.

Students: fill out your course evals here.

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on April 16, 2010 (boomark / email).