Thread by @GregDowney1

Student evaluations are biased? Yes, yes, they are. But I'm going to share a thread about how I manipulate student evaluation scores. So buckle up -- this may sound cynical, but I hope my goals are clearer by the end. #teachingadvice 1/-

https://twitter.com/LSEImpactBlog/status/1314204069435568134

A couple of years ago in a staff meeting, I shared my methods for manipulating student evaluation scores, and my colleagues were a combination of horrified and amazed, but I think there's actually pedagogical value in what I'm doing. 2/-

If you want to manipulate your evaluation scores, the first thing you need to do is look long and hard at the evaluation form itself. What you are likely to find is that your university is asking a series of strange questions, some of which are not obvious. 3/-

It's very hard to manipulate the evaluations if you don't know what's being evaluated. For example, my university evaluates a series of items that I consider to be of dubious pedagogical value (in some instances) but our evaluation form is committed to. 4/-

For example, our evaluation form considers it crucial to evaluate whether the 'objectives' of a class were 'clear.' They do not ask whether those objectives were ambitious, exciting, challenging, etc. My university form has instutionalised 'objective clarity' as a value. 5/-

It's literally the first question (I believe) in the evaluation form. Truth is, I don't see why that's such an important pedagogical value. In my teaching, I hope students might join for lots of reasons but have their expectations expanded and transcended. 6/-

For example, maybe they take my human evolution class because the course description sounds 'fun,' but in the process, I can teach them critical thinking, to question how science is reported, to denaturalise gender, race, sex, and a host of other factors... 7/-

But university teaching evaluation says 'clarity' is key and the only thing about 'objectives' that is important (not the other cool stuff I would prefer to evaluate). So how do I respond to this? I TELL my students that the objectives are clear! 8/-

Yep, you read that right. I just tell them in the last lecture, in my course wrap up, here's my objectives, here's how we met them, isn't that f*in' clear as day!

I go through the whole evaluation form, and I make sure that I'm making explicit HOW I address that criteria... 9/-

... & how we met the criteria. It's not some Jedi mind trick. It's because I actually do seek to achieve what my university sets out in our evaluation form as our implicit 'pedagogical values' as a university. If one of the eval criteria sucks, I elevate it. 10/-

For example, if the evaluation form would ask about 'job ready skills' (they don't... yet... but I'm waiting), I would say, these are the skills you need for your professional lives; here's how we achieved those. 11/-

This is an old trick that I learned when I was a door-to-door salesman (that's how I paid for my university expenses). You have to anticipate your students' confusion and show them how to make sense of the evaluation. You have to teach them how to evaluate you. 12/-

I am already anticipating that there are likely to be howls of complaint about my methods for 'gaming' evaluations, but I think that we overestimate how transparent these evaluation forms are. They really don't make any sense sometimes unless you're marinated in L&T-speak. 13/-

And it makes sense to be transparent about what we sought to achieve, why, and how. For example, I will criticise an evaluation criteria EXPLICITLY if I think I need to and tell students what I think is a BETTER way to interpret it. 14/-

Because I care VERY MUCH about good pedagogy, you better bet I'm going to have baked into the course structure my real goals and found a way to get them evaluated.

Another example, there's questions about feedback on the evaluation, something like 'I got timely feedback.' 15/-

I hear lecturers with big lecturer classes complain about getting slammed for 'timely feedback' in evaluations. But have they talked to students about what 'timely feedback' is? Have they explained WHY they don't get their papers back the next day? 16/-

Have the explicitly come out and talked about how heroic their markers and tutors are to get marks back for so many students as quickly as they do, given that they have work of their own as grad students? I talk about it, and I use the language of the evaluation form. 17/-

I have even had students applaud their tutors for timely feedback. We've talked about how they have plenty of time to implement the feedback from the firsts assignment in the second one. I don't apologise to students -- I tell them how I meet my pedagogical goals. 18/-

The bottom line: you have to help students have the right expectations of you if they're going to evaluate you. OF COURSE, it helps me that I'm an old white guy with a certain kind of personality. I don't know how well this works with other people. 19/-

But it's a trick from sales: you've got to answer objections before they are made. If you wait until someone evaluates you negatively, it's too late. I try to get in front of the evaluation, adjust their expectations, talk openly about my goals & rationales, and ... 20/-

...then I think I am more likely to get evaluated on fair grounds. Do I still have students who hate me and try to burn me in evaluations? YEEAAAAHHHH... Disgruntled students are going to do that. I can't fix that. But I can fix the fact that students are asked... 21/-

... to evaluate us as instructors without ever really being taught HOW to evaluate us. I try to do that in my course. And I go back to it at the end, talking about the syllabus and what I promised at the end. It's not just to boost evaluations: I think that it's ... 22/-

... pedagogically important to concretise what we have explored and learned together. By going back to the beginning, I think I get a fairer evaluation.

I don't know if this will work for you, but I wanted to share it. 23/23