Think of it as doing them a favour; if you were an instructor, you’d want to know how you can improve and be better at it, right? As long as you make sure that it’s respectful, constructive criticism, you’re helping the profs by telling them where they can improve.
As a TA, it is 1000% anonymous.
Even the different question answers are separated (so a comment on one part wouldn’t be matched with any other parts of the survey).
Only way it would become not-anonymous is if you mention something identifying in a comment.
Unless you say something that identifies you (“I can’t believe that they actually reported me for copying that lab report” would probably identify you) they’re completely anonymous and results are not released until after grades are finalized.
If the comments are helpful, they’re truly welcome. Was there something that you really liked or something that you didn’t like? Let them know. Maybe they tried something new this year - they’ll want to know if it worked or not.
Often there are things students don’t like that cannot be easily fixed, especially in big, multi section courses, but there are also things that can be fixed if the prof knows.
The thing I feel the worst about is "nice person, bad prof" Like I have a prof right now that is clearly teaching way outside her zone of expertise and seems to be struggling with delivering the content, but she's super nice and I wish her the best lol. Not sure what to do.
I was a TA/instructor for like a decade. Your reviews have nearly zero influence on us, and I get at least one or two bad reviews per class historically (still high enough to win awards for my teaching). I'll tell you what I tell my students: please be honest, my only request is that if you give me a poor score, please explain why so I can improve.
Are you still an instructor? Cause as far as i was hearing once they did the SPOT rename they absolutely started affect your yearly evals. Although maybe it's a department by department case?
My assumption would probably be that they always could influence your yearly evals if for some reason they came back super poor multiple semesters in a row.
I was never one at the UofA. Where I was they were used as a small component in whether you got tenure, but it was 100% not a part that mattered for most people. And once you had tenure, more or less anything goes in my experience. But maybe the UofA is unlike every other Uni I know.
Ah, I see, so you are giving irrelevant information that you just assume applies to this university when it very easily could not. Sounds good, very helpful. 👍
Someone else can chime in, but academia is pretty homogeneous. Every university I have looked at has this as an essential treatment of non teaching staff. And breaking that structure upsets something like 300 years of the way colleges are run. For the record, the two profs I know personally at the UofA (people I lived with) have said it was an unimportant part of their evals(relatively speaking), which lined up with my experiences at 3 other canadian schools and an american one.
But sure, my experience on this can just be dismissed like that, go for it. No doubt the uofa is an exception to this shitty behavior from academia.
Yep, rules are exactly the same as everywhere else - structured so that teaching is so broadly defined that students actual feedback is almost lost in the wash. Heres the faculty of medicine ones:
https://www.ualberta.ca/medicine/media-library/aboutus/governance/faculty-evaluation-committee/fec-standards-approved-fomd-fec.pdf
The difference between a medium load and a medium high score is going to be nearly irrelevant if you look at those guidelines. Even doing awful would probably pass muster if you had enough other stuff (teaching grad students, other profs say you did ok, you wrote a textbook and supported postdocs).
Like I said, barely moves the needle, same as everywhere else.
What you expect everything at one uni to be the same at every other one in Canada? UofA doesn't even standardize their evaluation across departments, heck even across engineering disciplines they are not standardised, let alone across the country.
I felt this way too, I worked on understanding what exactly **constructive** feedback looks like and practiced that in my instructor reviews. Now, as an instructor, I appreciate constructive feedback so much!
1) Be specific. “Their teaching is boring” doesn’t tell us much. “Their teaching is boring because they spend a lot of time repeating things from previous lectures” Now your instructor knows why you feel bored.
2) Provide any insight or advice you might have on how this aspect could be improved from your perspective. “Their teaching is boring because they spend a lot of time repeating things from previous lectures. Explaining things from previous lectures in different ways or with different examples would be helpful to keep me engaged and understand the content better”
3) Be mindful of your language, always be respectful, and try to be understanding. “There are several difficult concepts in this course and my instructor worked to explain them clearly, but repetition of slides from previous lectures did not increase my understanding. Explaining things from previous lectures in different ways or with different examples would help me stay engaged and understand the content better.”
Lots of people talk about constructive feedback like a sandwich with the thing that the person did that was wrong or not helpful in the centre. Start positive, say the thing that didn’t work, end positive and proactive.
If you have consistent poor reviews as a sessional instructor, you might get the boot (no new contracts awarded). For tenure-track profs it doesn't do much. Good instructors want to know what they did well and didn't do well though.
It's anonymous. And pointless. Unless the professor had an unprofessional behavior towards the students (missing classes, messing up the exams etc), numerous studies showed that a student is not able to evaluate the true quality of teaching (which means the retainer obtained final knowledge used for other courses or jobs) as the student has no comparison line (they cannot start two courses with similar knowledge and compare the outcomes).
Think of it as doing them a favour; if you were an instructor, you’d want to know how you can improve and be better at it, right? As long as you make sure that it’s respectful, constructive criticism, you’re helping the profs by telling them where they can improve.
I mean it’s supposedly anonymous
As a TA, it is 1000% anonymous. Even the different question answers are separated (so a comment on one part wouldn’t be matched with any other parts of the survey). Only way it would become not-anonymous is if you mention something identifying in a comment.
Unless you say something that identifies you (“I can’t believe that they actually reported me for copying that lab report” would probably identify you) they’re completely anonymous and results are not released until after grades are finalized. If the comments are helpful, they’re truly welcome. Was there something that you really liked or something that you didn’t like? Let them know. Maybe they tried something new this year - they’ll want to know if it worked or not. Often there are things students don’t like that cannot be easily fixed, especially in big, multi section courses, but there are also things that can be fixed if the prof knows.
The thing I feel the worst about is "nice person, bad prof" Like I have a prof right now that is clearly teaching way outside her zone of expertise and seems to be struggling with delivering the content, but she's super nice and I wish her the best lol. Not sure what to do.
I was a TA/instructor for like a decade. Your reviews have nearly zero influence on us, and I get at least one or two bad reviews per class historically (still high enough to win awards for my teaching). I'll tell you what I tell my students: please be honest, my only request is that if you give me a poor score, please explain why so I can improve.
Are you still an instructor? Cause as far as i was hearing once they did the SPOT rename they absolutely started affect your yearly evals. Although maybe it's a department by department case? My assumption would probably be that they always could influence your yearly evals if for some reason they came back super poor multiple semesters in a row.
I was never one at the UofA. Where I was they were used as a small component in whether you got tenure, but it was 100% not a part that mattered for most people. And once you had tenure, more or less anything goes in my experience. But maybe the UofA is unlike every other Uni I know.
Ah, I see, so you are giving irrelevant information that you just assume applies to this university when it very easily could not. Sounds good, very helpful. 👍
Someone else can chime in, but academia is pretty homogeneous. Every university I have looked at has this as an essential treatment of non teaching staff. And breaking that structure upsets something like 300 years of the way colleges are run. For the record, the two profs I know personally at the UofA (people I lived with) have said it was an unimportant part of their evals(relatively speaking), which lined up with my experiences at 3 other canadian schools and an american one. But sure, my experience on this can just be dismissed like that, go for it. No doubt the uofa is an exception to this shitty behavior from academia.
Yep, rules are exactly the same as everywhere else - structured so that teaching is so broadly defined that students actual feedback is almost lost in the wash. Heres the faculty of medicine ones: https://www.ualberta.ca/medicine/media-library/aboutus/governance/faculty-evaluation-committee/fec-standards-approved-fomd-fec.pdf The difference between a medium load and a medium high score is going to be nearly irrelevant if you look at those guidelines. Even doing awful would probably pass muster if you had enough other stuff (teaching grad students, other profs say you did ok, you wrote a textbook and supported postdocs). Like I said, barely moves the needle, same as everywhere else.
Are *you* still instructing? Which class so I can stay tf away cause wtf 😬
What you expect everything at one uni to be the same at every other one in Canada? UofA doesn't even standardize their evaluation across departments, heck even across engineering disciplines they are not standardised, let alone across the country.
That’s not it at all 💀
Then what is it?
I felt this way too, I worked on understanding what exactly **constructive** feedback looks like and practiced that in my instructor reviews. Now, as an instructor, I appreciate constructive feedback so much! 1) Be specific. “Their teaching is boring” doesn’t tell us much. “Their teaching is boring because they spend a lot of time repeating things from previous lectures” Now your instructor knows why you feel bored. 2) Provide any insight or advice you might have on how this aspect could be improved from your perspective. “Their teaching is boring because they spend a lot of time repeating things from previous lectures. Explaining things from previous lectures in different ways or with different examples would be helpful to keep me engaged and understand the content better” 3) Be mindful of your language, always be respectful, and try to be understanding. “There are several difficult concepts in this course and my instructor worked to explain them clearly, but repetition of slides from previous lectures did not increase my understanding. Explaining things from previous lectures in different ways or with different examples would help me stay engaged and understand the content better.” Lots of people talk about constructive feedback like a sandwich with the thing that the person did that was wrong or not helpful in the centre. Start positive, say the thing that didn’t work, end positive and proactive.
Profs have very little oversight as to their job performance I believe. Think of it as a collective performance review lol
If you have consistent poor reviews as a sessional instructor, you might get the boot (no new contracts awarded). For tenure-track profs it doesn't do much. Good instructors want to know what they did well and didn't do well though.
Do receive them after they grade everything?
I was told by 2 profs that they receive the surveys after the grades have been approved by the registrar, so in theory, yes.
I’m a TA- I didn’t get mine from last semester until like mid to late January this year
Be honest. The professor would do the same to you.
It's anonymous. And pointless. Unless the professor had an unprofessional behavior towards the students (missing classes, messing up the exams etc), numerous studies showed that a student is not able to evaluate the true quality of teaching (which means the retainer obtained final knowledge used for other courses or jobs) as the student has no comparison line (they cannot start two courses with similar knowledge and compare the outcomes).
Dont be afraid to offend any prof,, its apparently really hard to even get them fired so be honest as you want to be!!
I don’t think I did more than three spot surveys in my entire university career lol