Teaching evaluation

Yesterday I met a person from the pedagogy institute of the university in order to discuss my teaching evaluation. The faculties organise a standard evaluation, which is to some extent out of your control. In this case, the evaluation questionnaire is tailored to a specific course, after a detailed discussion about what one wants to assess or improve. Sounds a bit more useful to me than the standardised questionnaire. Indeed, after picking the course that seemed the most important and useful to assess this year, and discussing my main worries and priorities in this course, I had to go through a list of items for the questionnaire.

I really had to make an effort to make rational choices, as opposed to “ Let’s skip this one, because I know I was crap at that one !” or “I think I got this one right, let’s pick it !”. The lady in charge of me will now prepare the customised questionnaire. This bunch of people are really nice and enthusiastic and imaginative about teaching, it is really inspiring.

On the other hand, the university has announced the suppression of a large number of TA jobs. Because of that and other glitches, there is a serious chance I will loose mine. Some of the stuff I teach would be useless without practical exercises… where is the pedagogy there?

The will in this university to have professors look critically at their own teaching in order to improve it has increased dramatically over the past few years, and it’s a good thing. But what if what’s given in one side is taken away at another side? Proper education isn’t only about the right mind frame and background of lecturers… it’s also about proper support… no?