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

@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