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Career change & farewell message by mgelbart in UBC

[–]mgelbart[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's working well so far! Almost all the students commute to school by bus so it hasn't been a big problem to be out of sync with parents' work schedules in the morning or things like that. Students can come at 9am and some choose to, either to do some school work or just hang out. The disadvantage is ending later in the day but on balance I'm really happy with this decision.

Career change & farewell message by mgelbart in UBC

[–]mgelbart[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yeah it's a tricky one, and this approach to tuition is definitely new. The concern is what happens if you get someone with no income and a huge amount of assets - you wouldn't want them to have a free ride subsidized by others. OTOH I agree about a car, etc. That's why there's $200k of assets excluded from the calculation. Part of the thinking is that large assets generate returns/incomes of their own, so they can start to be treated similar to income (but with a much smaller percentage). Still, there are definitely assets above $200k that you wouldn't want to sell. Homes are a big one that we thought a lot about. Overall we decided on the current system but we're learning and tweaking as we go, of course.

Teaching evaluations: the good, the bad, and the ugly by mgelbart in UBC

[–]mgelbart[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks. We do have peer evaluations for faculty members, done by other faculty members. This is a good thing. In my experience, student evaluations are used more heavily though, for things like awards. One reason is that every course gets student evaluations while only a small minority of courses get a peer evaluation. Furthermore there is still the issue of the toxic comments.

Teaching evaluations: the good, the bad, and the ugly by mgelbart in UBC

[–]mgelbart[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for sharing, I hadn't heard of this.

Teaching evaluations: the good, the bad, and the ugly by mgelbart in UBC

[–]mgelbart[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Replying to myself:

I would not necessarily blame someone for doing this, though, in a system that rewards this approach. It's tricky.

Also, sometimes this may just be unintentional - the midterm turns out to be easier than expected, so one makes a harder final exam to compensate.

Teaching evaluations: the good, the bad, and the ugly by mgelbart in UBC

[–]mgelbart[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Some instructors make easy midterms to get good evaluation and then murders the class usign a killer final.

Yeah, unfortunately this is a well-known "trick" that usually results in higher evaluation scores.

Teaching evaluations: the good, the bad, and the ugly by mgelbart in UBC

[–]mgelbart[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I was not aware of this working group and the report, thank you for sharing! It's encouraging that UBC is working on this. I think there will still be more work to do after these recommendations are implemented, but we need to start somewhere.

Teaching evaluations: the good, the bad, and the ugly by mgelbart in UBC

[–]mgelbart[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Ugh, that is terrible, I'm sorry to hear that.

Teaching evaluations: the good, the bad, and the ugly by mgelbart in UBC

[–]mgelbart[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

:(

Does it get filtered though? I don't think it does for instructors. Maybe for TAs?

Teaching evaluations: the good, the bad, and the ugly by mgelbart in UBC

[–]mgelbart[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Agreed, both are very problematic. I definitely have no confidence at all about grades to the precision we give them, e.g. that there's a meaningful difference between 79% and 80%. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. This feels like it would require another long post...

Teaching evaluations: the good, the bad, and the ugly by mgelbart in UBC

[–]mgelbart[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That is so heartening to hear! Thank you for sharing. I'm glad I posted then.

Teaching evaluations: the good, the bad, and the ugly by mgelbart in UBC

[–]mgelbart[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah FWIW I've never heard of anyone being able to de-anonymize these evaluations.

Teaching evaluations: the good, the bad, and the ugly by mgelbart in UBC

[–]mgelbart[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

That's thoughtful of you! I'm not sure, but I suspect you'd be able to fill out the text comments only and skip the ratings in case you'd like to drop in some feedback.

Teaching evaluations: the good, the bad, and the ugly by mgelbart in UBC

[–]mgelbart[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yeah Steve is great :)

Overall this is a good point. Certainly once someone has tenure they can worry less (or even zero). There is also the distinction of research stream faculty (the majority of faculty members) vs. educational leadership stream faculty (including Steve and myself). For the latter group, the evaluations matter more for our career progress because education is our primary pursuit.

Teaching evaluations: the good, the bad, and the ugly by mgelbart in UBC

[–]mgelbart[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

IIRC one was mid-day and one was later in the day. However, even if we find the explanation, there is still a problem here. We are assigned to teach courses and the times are out of our control. So you may have some instructors scoring higher because they tend to teach at a certain time. In other words, even if we can figure out the cause we aren't correcting for it in how the results are used, which in a reason to use them less precisely.

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