I've been dreading reading my course evaluations this semester because of some problems I had with one class, or actually just one small segment of that class--a group of students not at all shy about expressing their dissatisfaction all semester long. I agonized over that difficult class from the first week: Is it something I'm doing or not doing? Should I devote more class time to troublesome topics or insist on one-on-one conferences? Or maybe the problem is unrelated to my teaching: is it the textbook, the time of day, the composition of the class?
Whatever the reason, that class challenged my sanity all semester long and made me wonder what that small group of mouthy malcontents would write on the online course evaluations. And the answer is: not much.
The numerical responses from that class were about the same as those in my other classes and the written comments were mostly positive--except for three that stood out from the rest. The most concise complaint suggested that I could improve the course by "being a professor instead of a [really nasty word]."
I'll take that suggestion under advisement.
Course evaluations are anonymous so I can't say for certain who wrote this, but I recognize the style and I am not inclined to give the complaint much credit. It's not a particularly compelling argument and it differs so drastically from the style and content of the other comments that it's clearly an outlier, a cry of pain from a student who found the road to success pockmarked with potholes.
I found these evaluations oddly cheering. After all that agonizing over where I had gone wrong in teaching this course, the students rose up and declared that it really wasn't all that bad after all. That may not be a ringing endorsement, but for a really difficult class, this may be as good as it gets.
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