At the end of each semester, students associate standard manila envelopes holding blank course evaluations with the opportunity to voice their opinions about teachers and curricula, and as indicators that classes are finally coming to a close.
To the faculty, however, course evaluations exist to evaluate their performance throughout the semester and discern the areas in which they can improve, according to Dean of Undergraduate Education James Glaser.
The evaluations ask students to rank their professors' clarity, accessibility and helpfulness - quantitatively, using bubble sheets - and allow students space for handwritten comments. The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate examines the comments closely, analyzing the information when looking at the tenure and promotion process.
"We physically sit down at the department and look at the course evaluations," said junior Matt Shapanka, the incoming chairman of the TCU's Education Committee. "And from there, we read them and write up a short one-page report of what the students had to say."
Associate Professor of English Sonia Hofkosh said that the evaluations are carefully read through and considered by professors.
"Students have a lot of power here at Tufts," Hofkosh said. "And most may not think they do, but the evaluations they write become very much a part of the way the professor perceives their teaching."
In fact, professors are often known to eagerly await the day that evaluations become available for their perusal.
"I can't think of one faculty member who hasn't wanted to see their students' evaluations as soon as they're accessible," said John LiBassi, the interim administrator for the sociology department.
Shapanka, who also works in the political science department, commented specifically on the department's eagerness to view course evaluations.
"The [political science] professors get very, very excited about seeing the course evaluations," he said. "Professors will submit their grades and literally get up out of their office to look at their students' evaluations."
Hofkosh said that while she always reads the course evaluations, the results can sometimes be difficult to discern.
"The reality of the course evaluation is that at least some of the time, you're going to get back really diametrically opposed opinions of your teaching," Hofkosh said. "For example, sometimes half the students will say the course had far too much reading, whereas the other half will say there wasn't enough. As a teacher, you have to look within those contradicting responses and really locate what's useful."
While these evaluations can indicate a faculty member's positive performance, they can also work to support the contrary. In such cases, evaluations are reviewed by the individual departments.
"Generally the chair of the department will read the individual professor evaluations, and if there seems to be a problem, they will assess the situation from there," Glaser said. "Usually, [the department] will already have an idea that there could be an issue or a problem, and the comments allow us to test that hypothesis."
Hofkosh cited the importance of student evaluations, and said that negative evaluations are beneficial to individual teachers because they allow them to assess their own classroom performance.
"In the long term, the evaluations have a lot of effect," Hofkosh said. "They are taken very seriously - both the good and the bad ones. Even the negative evaluations, if written constructively, can be very useful."
Glaser, who also teaches courses in the political science department, agreed. "I know in my own case, I've had students criticize a book or exam style that I've used - and that's meaningful," Glaser said.
Although students tend to understand the significance that the evaluations hold, some believe that certain parts hold greater weight than others when being reviewed by their professors.
"I feel like the teachers really do read the evaluations, especially because they always encourage us to fill out the written part," sophomore Juliana Wilking said. "But that sort of makes me wonder if they even look at the bubbled-in [quantitative] section. I hope they do, because I'm always really honest in that section - at least as honest as you can be when it comes to filling out bubbles."
The "bubbled-in section," Glaser explained, is the only portion of the evaluation that is processed by Dowling Hall, where the finished evaluations are scanned in order to compile averages and data from the filled-in bubbles.
"We at Dowling do not assess the qualitative [written] comments; the departments do," Glaser said. "Generally the chair of the department is responsible for assessing the performance of a professor, so a member of the department will read all of the evaluations to gain a sense of whether things are going well or not."
In addition to receiving the qualitative data, the departments also receive the averages and distributions of the quantitative data after they have been processed in Dowling.
Finally, a faculty member is given the opportunity to view his or her students' evaluations, but only once grades have been posted on Student Information System, in order to protect the student's grade from suffering any bias.
Glaser said that the possibility of discerning a student's identity from written comments on a course evaluation is nearly impossible.
"We don't offer classes with so few students that [the professor] would know whose handwriting was whose," Glaser said. "I know that some students might be sensitive to it, perhaps in a tiny class, but there are two things going on. First of all, you would really have to care a lot in order to figure out whose handwriting is whose, and secondly, the professors are not allowed to see the evaluations until the grades are turned in."
Once the entire evaluation process is complete, it is unlikely that students will even learn whether or not their evaluations helped a professor's promotion to tenure or a change to the curriculum of a course.
"The evaluations feed into the tenure and promotions process, so it's clear that they are meaningful," Glaser said. "But whether a particular comment you would make as a student is followed up on by a professor … I don't think you're going to see that."
