a.k.a. Grading Professors So WE Get Better Feedback

From Eben: " I think it is time to stop expecting to acquire commitment points by writing extensively about how to improve law school without having "actually" been through it. On the plus side, given the baseline . . . some . . . usual chatterers have laid down, you can get improvement points at this stage by writing even badly about substantive subjects. . . . [A]ll the unnecessary verbiage that has been expended on discussing . . . a hypothetical (and quite ridiculous) initiative to use "course evaluations" to improve the quality of educational evaluation - is still obscure to you, as it is to most of your teachers. That's not important here: you're studying to be a lawyer, not an educational reformer. You might want to take up the task in hand."

@Eben Thank you for your guidance. I would like to hear more about why the below idea is "ridiculous," but understand that you do not want the class to go in that direction.

I am not sure where to go now however. Perhaps you can help. While you make a strict distinction between education reform and lawyering, isn't it largely lawyers who write education policy. Certainly law school policy is created and changed by lawyers. From Robinson I took away that a "real lawyer knows how to take care of a legal problem." Advocating for an administrative change to improve a problem is exactly the kind of thing I hope to do as a lawyer. I thought as an aspiring lawyer it is appropriate for me to learn to take care of legal problem. Am I thinking about being a lawyer incorrectly or Am I thinking about your class incorrectly?

Students grade professors through course evaluation forms. Maybe we can use these forms to get better feedback from our professors. (The irony that the feedback we give them is already way more instructive than the feedback we receive is not lost on me.) Anyway, through the evaluation forms we give feedback on many different aspects of the professor's performance, but we don't give feedback on how good their feedback to us is. Maybe if we successfully lobby for a "rate your professor's feedback" box on the evaluation forms, we can begin to establish feedback as an important part of a professor's job.

Changing the forms might be a good first step in changing how professor's think about their responsibility. Getting a "feedback given to student" question on the form does not require the university to expend any resources or change any policies. My hunch is, however, that professors are adverse to getting negative evaluations, and after a semester of getting low ratings in the "feedback given to student" category they will evolve. I hope the evolution will not be in the form of a faculty resolution to strip the new category from the evaluations. (Whether cynics or optimists change the world is a question for a different discussion.)

The first hurdle is that most of the little feedback we get comes from exam grades and, if we are lucky, exam comments one month after we fill out the evaluation forms. I have talked to Dean Schizer and he emphasized that it is important to have students fill out the forms before finals, because the response rate decreases if the forms are given after finals. I suggested to him having two rounds of evaluation:

Round I: Evaluations just like they are now. Neither the timing or questions change.

Round II: After the semester, students can answer three additional questions on the quality of the feedback they got during the semester, the quality of the final exam, and whether they got a grade they expected.

The Dean responded quickly -- and I give him credit for doing so -- writing "I will pass on your thought to colleagues who help to set these policies." I am sure he is very busy, so I do not expect anything to happen unless someone pushes it along.

If other students are interested, maybe we can develop this idea further and try to build momentum.

What do you think?

-- AlexAsen - 12 Feb 2010

Interesting idea, but I question what value it would really have. Is there any evidence professors do anything with the evaluations they get now? That their supervisors look at them or do anything with them? If they don't care about what we're saying now, or at least don't change in response to it, I don't see how rating their feedback level will make a difference any more than any other complaints (or compliments) do. I'm especially skeptical because it seems that all this would do is congratulate those profs who do give feedback, but would not hurt those who don't, because the norm is not to. If the school doesn't require (or even encourage) any feedback other than grades, the school is not going to punish a prof for us telling them what they already know-- that we don't get feedback. Another problem is that profs are hired and kept around based on what they publish/the work they do outside of class, not if they are particularly good teachers, so I don't know if the school really cares how much feedback we're getting in the first place.

On the other hand, it couldn't hurt, and would at least give future students an idea of what to expect. And like you said, it would not involve too much work to implement.

-- RorySkaggs - 13 Feb 2010

I think the value here is in exactly what you downplayed Rory: future students would have a better idea of what to expect from professors. Any additional knowledge students can have about these mysterious tendencies would be a benefit to them. There is even a possibility that a student who is armed with the knowledge can realize that certain professors need to be pushed much more during the semester in order to give the type of feedback they want. I think to sit back and say that because these professors publish articles we are powerless to change what goes on in our education is lying down. We can certainly have a realistic view of things, but we shouldn't let that deter us from even trying to be lawyers...aka make change using words. These reviews are exactly the type of vehicles that allow us to take action; they are publications of our words to our target audience. If we can't believe we can make change with them, we are in serious trouble as young lawyers.

-- RobLaser - 14 Feb 2010

@Rob- I think you're confusing the necessity to change a problem with differences regarding how to do it. I also think you are addressing a different problem than Alex did-- my understanding was that Alex was proposing this idea in an effort to change what professors do, not to just let the students know about what happens. And my point is that if we are trying to change what professors do, this seems a rather passive way to do it. As I mentioned, do professors change in response to student evaluations? And more importantly, does administration put any pressure on them to give feedback to us? If we really want to change the system, we have to attack it directly, not just by telling each other what we already know. We need to change how classes, and probably the whole curriculum, are structured. I'm not at all sure how to do that, all I'm saying is adding another box to class evals doesn't seem like the best or most effective way to do it.

Also, I'm not sure how much benefit they would have even for us, especially during first year when we can't pick our classes anyways. Don't we know that we're not going to get feedback just by the nature of law school itself? Until that changes, I'm not sure how much there will be to say. The eval will say 'you take one test and don't get any feedback on it', we will say 'yes I know it's like almost every other class I could have told you that.' So we need to figure out how to change the norm, not just talk about it. But like I said, it also couldn't hurt anything, especially if some professors do change in response to evaluations, so I would support it regardless-- just not as the only way to solve the problem.

-- RorySkaggs - 15 Feb 2010

I think this is a place to start. It is an easy way to get our words to our intended audience (the administration, faculty, and students). I don't think we should turn down any vehicle to make our words heard.

@Rory- I seem to have misunderstood the extent to which you were criticizing the suggestion. There does not seem to be much disagreement between us.

-- RobLaser - 15 Feb 2010

Since there appears to be agreement that evaluations may not be earth shattering but will be easy to institute, I suggest that we turn this topic into a discussion about more radical ways in which we can change these policies. I recommend we hold a sit in at the faculty lounge. Feel free to brainstorm.

PS: I'm serious, and considering Mr. Skaggs's comments, I expect you to be with me Rory

-- RobLaser - 15 Feb 2010

I think we also need to refine our goals to something specific an reasonably attainable. I suggest individual feedback on exams and/or 1 hour midterms that are not graded but are given feedback. Thoughts?

-- RobLaser - 15 Feb 2010

@Rob and @Rory - Thanks for the feedback! I very much appreciate you taking the time to consider this idea.

@Rob I admire your ambition.

Eben recounted the history leading up to Brown v Board of Ed in class. He talked about how equalizing pay for black teachers built up a base of support for future initiatives and, to a lesser extent, got the country comfortable considering that there is a problem.

(Please do not read this as me equating institutional segregation and poor professoring as morally equivalent problems. I am just trying to draw lessons from a successful movement.)

The lessons I draw are (1) start small and (2) take concrete steps the affect actual, if small, change.

I don't think we are ready for protests such as sit-ins. Foremost, I don't think we have the support from the student body required to making protesting work. People are busy and I think we have to let this issue develop naturally. I hope these new evaluation questions may fertilize that natural development. As you pointed out, evaluations will help future students know what to expect and I think it will also help current students realize what is missing.

The second reason I think we have to take a slow approach to this issue, is for two reasons I don't think we can force professors into changing their ways; we have to make them want to. Protests make us adversarial. We are only here for another 2.5 years and will probably only be engaged for 1 more year. The faculty knows they can just wait us out.

Eben quoted an anonymous professor arguing for the existence of grades because giving students feedback is important. My hunch, and hope, is that many professor are genuinely interested in providing the best possible experience for their students, they has just not considered that current system is failing. I think the best way to show that the system is failing is by giving professors feedback on the issue. After all, that is our point -- to improve one first needs feedback on what they are doing wrong, otherwise they will continue to make the same mistakes.

I am happy for people to spend time brainstorming bigger ideas, but I don't want to lose focus on this idea. Perhaps you would like to make a post starting a forum to discuss the big ideas and this page could become a subtopic. What do you think?

One last point, I can think of no better weapon for future protests, if it comes to that, than a mound of data showing that feedback is currently a problem.

I think the next steps are to:

(1) draft what we want the Round II questions to look like.

(2) draft the letter introducing Round II and making it clear we do not want to interfere with the timing of Round I. When I briefly exchange emails with the dean about adding Round II, protecting Round I was his biggest concern.

(3) revise.

(4) figure out who has the power to implement this and contact them. Is anyone involved in the Student Senate? Could it be helpful?

I think we should wait until after class on Tuesday before moving on with this road map. I imagine this wiki is most active on class days and hope more people will add ideas to the discussion before we continue.

-- AlexAsen - 15 Feb 2010

I'll hold off anything substantive for now, but one thought popped into my head which I think needs to be answered-- is this the kind of feedback we're looking for? What we did right or wrong on a test? Isn't that feedback only useful for taking other tests, which is not what we'll be doing once we leave school? It seems to me the feedback we want should be related to how to be a lawyer, not how to take a law school test. That's why I think some more fundamental changes are needed, and also why I find it kind of perplexing how many law school professors have never actually been lawyers.

-- RorySkaggs - 15 Feb 2010

[I have set up a new topic regarding Rory's comment about our professors often never having practiced.] http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/twiki/bin/view/LawContempSoc/LawProfessorsWhoNeverPracticed

I think Rory makes good points about the feedback. As for the sit in idea, it was more about trying to alert the faculty to exactly how serious a problem we feel this is. It was not intended as an adversarial attack, but more of a wake up call that may not be communicated simply from reading the evaluations. A more dramatic, face to face statement may be more effective.

I agree with Rory that more fundamental changes need to take place. I would really like law school to look extremely different from the shape it takes right now. However, I would be behind efforts to get more feedback in the current system as I feel it would provide immediate, positive results while we continue to work towards larger goals.

That being said, I echo Alex's request for anyone to post any information they have on the process required to institute evaluation of feedback.

-- RobLaser - 15 Feb 2010