Legal Commentary

In a post last week, I cited to an article discussing the decreasing percentage of students completing student evaluations as schools switch to online evaluation systems. One way that some professors have tried to circumvent this decrease is through the mid-semester student evaluation, discussed on here by Verity Winship in October 2008. On the one hand, these mid-semester evaluations can be more useful than end-of-semester evaluations because they allow professors to see if there is anything students dislike and change it before the class is over. On the other hand, I think that students might pull their punches in mid-semester evaluations rather than have to face the professor whom they criticized for the rest of the semester, reducing the efficacy of such evaluations. I also think that student concerns about anonymity are higher for mid-semester evaluations than for end-of semester evaluations.

That said, colleagues using mid-semester evaluations uniformly have told me that they love the feedback that they get and that they find it much more valuable than the feedback they get on end-of-semester evaluations. So, I have several purposes in this post. The first is to get a general sense of how many professors (or at least how many professors reading this post) use mid-semester evaluations. You can answer that by answering the poll below. The second is to ask professors who use mid-semester evaluations how they conduct their evaluations to ensure against concerns about student anonymity and lack of candor in responses. You can answer that by leaving a comment. The third is to ask professors who don't use mid-semester evaluations why you don't use them. You can also answer that by leaving a comment. Finally, my fourth questions is whether tenure committees should use mid-semester evaluations in making tenure and promotion decisions as they now use end-of semester evaluations. You can answer that by answering the poll below and/or leaving a comment. Thanks.

-Colin Miller