Student Feedback

[Missy Lectron]

This is a question directed at the more experienced teachers here. How useful do you typically find student feedback to be? I am curious about the usefulness others have seen in their students' feedback throughout their career, because it would be naive to write everything off as overly harsh. Most students I have encountered are surprisingly honest when it comes to evaluations of themselves, peers and teachers, but they also have their own agendas and far less insight into what is important in their education. I've found it difficult to tease out the meaningful from the meaningless in this regard (I am a college student now, recieving feedback as a TA).

It's just annoying that for every ten great comments, it's the one confusingly harsh comment that ends up being such a buzzkill. I plan on becoming a science educator, so this isn't an issue that will be disappearing any time soon. My skin is still in the process of thickening...:p

[Chocolate_New_Orleans]

you hit the nail on the head, they have their own agendas, slants and it's very dependant on how they felt towards you in that moment of time (last day you student taught) If you had to get onto them, or they got a bad grade and they blame you...

FWIW - I took the three best student evals. and put them in my resume along with professional recomendations. Of course, at my first teaching job, the admin could have cared less about all that crap as all they wanted was someone to just accept the position I applied for. My second position, they planned to hire me before I ever interviewed so I could have written out my resume and it wouldn't have mattered.

I still have all my student evaluations for student teaching still. Everyonce in a while, I find them and read through them for a chuckle. I'm having trouble remembering who some of them are now.

My cousin was in my student teaching class, he graduates college this year. Been a short 10 years

[Mr. H]

Feedback is great.. You should be able to weed through the BS feedback and pull out the useful bits. If something you read rings true, then you know it's a gem. Yeah, most of it will be crud but you might get something good out of it.

[Chocolate_New_Orleans]

like kid's opinions matter :rolleyes:

[Mr. H]

Some of them do matter... sometimes they have insights that we miss. You never know.

Sometimes giving the students a little power over decision making (or at least the illusion of power) can help the class run a little more smoothly with out much work.