Course evaluations in doubt
Course evaluations in doubt | |
The Chinese University's "Dr. Lee Moon Chuen issue" aroused controversies about the methods and effectiveness of course evaluations. Consequently, course evaluations suddenly have become a hot topic among university students.
The Dr. Lee Moon Chuen issue started when a Chinese University student wrote a letter about Dr. Lee, a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science, to the Student Press. The student said the lecturer allegedly threatened his students to think twice before writing anything negative against him on the course evaluation questionnaire.
In fact, the use of questionnaires is a very common approach in gathering students' feedback for courses in tertiary institutions.
However, according to Dr. Pedro Ng, a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the same university, every department's policy on course evaluations is different:
"The actual design of the questionnaire is made by the department or faculty concerned according to different formats of the courses. The methods used and the scope of evaluations may be different."
In the Sociology Department, the evaluation procedures is as such: "Our course evaluations are usually done within the last two lectures of the courses," said Dr. Ng.
"When the students are filling in the questionnaires, lecturers should not appear in the classrooms. It is the technicians or assistants who are responsible for distributing and collecting the forms."
Following this rule, the influence of the lecturers would be minimized when the students are doing evaluations.
Dr. Ng continued: "Technicians would then organize and analyze the materials collected. The questionnaires are returned to the lecturers only after the submission of students' term grades."
Thus, the collected students' feedback is not given to the lecturers until the end of the courses, said Dr. Ng.
However, since the results of students' evaluations are not the most important criteria used in retention and promotion of lecturers, their effects are in doubt.
"It depends on how the lecturers evaluate the collected results - they may make some improvements in the courses afterwards," said Dr. Ng.
To Mr. Simon Lo, the former editor-in-chief of the Student Press at the Chinese University, course evaluations are one way to improve the quality of teaching, but it surely needs some improvements.
"Whether course evaluations work depends a lot on the lecturers' attitudes," said he.
He said that if the lecturers do not consider the evaluations results seriously, the improvement of quality of teaching would be hindered.
"If the evaluations results are linked (more directly) with the promotion system, their importance will be raised. The lecturers will then pay more attention to them," Mr. Lo continued.
He also suggested using more open-ended questions on the questionnaires.
Said he: "Although the instructors may consider the responses too subjective in open-ended questions, they do leave more room for students to comment.
"Also, the situation would be much better if the students could see the past course evaluations results before taking any course - since the lecturers would have more initiatives to improve.
At the University of Hong Kong, course evaluations were suggested in 1992 and were fully implemented in the same year, according to Director of External Relations Rupert Chan.
Afterwards, the results collected in the course evaluations should not be read by lecturers only, but they should also be reported in the Staff-Student Consultative Committee of the corresponding faculty.
"However, methods to do the course evaluations are not standardized and are designed by individual department and faculty. There will be an evaluation of the implementation of the system in the 1995-96 semester," Mr. Chan said.
The case of the Polytechnic University of Hong Kong is similar, according to its academic secretariat:
"There is no fixed policy or any standard procedure to the question on how to conduct the evaluations.
"Students' feedback is only one of the components in the course evaluations. That is, how to improve the course does not depend entirely on the students' opinion," she added.
Nevertheless, annual course reports would be submitted to the corresponding departments and faculties, which will summarize and report them to the central administrative department.
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This system has been enforced since 1986. Commenting on the usefulness of course evaluations, Miss Grace Lam, a second year student in the medical school at the University of Hong Kong, said, "I think the questionnaires can help in gathering information for the consideration of promotion of the lecturers and the improvements of the courses. The Polytechnic University academic secretariat expressed doubts about the promotion guideline purpose of the course evaluations. |
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"I don't know whether or not the students' feedback in the course evaluations is used as a guideline for the promotion of lecturers.
"So far, there seems to be a direct relationship between the comments of students and the subsequent improvements of the courses after evaluations only," she said.
Still, the validity of the results of course evaluations is in doubt.
