Despite being armed with the Student Course Guide, learned words of academic advisers and stories from peers, students still encounter the occasional bad class. Reasons for bad classes range anywhere from widely divergent precepts, to professors unable to clarify material to an excess of reading material. Currently, students can only officially express dissatisfaction with such issues and offer constructive criticism at the end of a course, when filling out course evaluation forms.
While these comments provide important information for department heads, instructors and prospective students, they do very little to benefit those currently enrolled. By the time a student drops off the sealed grey and white envelopes in West College, the class will meet at most a few more times before exams hit.
Only a handful of departments and individual instructors currently ask students to fill out mid-semester evaluations. The information gathered in these surveys can be used to correct issues and improve the course halfway through the semester, benefiting both future and current students.
Under the current system, there is no formal way to improve a poorly taught course while it's being taught. While students can individually express dissatisfaction to professors and preceptors, most professors are reluctant to change the work load or their teaching method for just one student and individual students are hesitant to criticize their instructors. With anonymous input from a sizeable percentage of the entire class, however, professors have more reason and incentive to change and improve aspects of a course.
The current end of semester course evaluations should be left in place, but midterm evaluations should be instituted as well. Midterm evaluations need not be as formal as end of semester evaluations, and should not go on anyone's personal teaching record; they should merely offer direction and insight for the professor to improve the course while he is teaching, if necessary. At a minimum, midterm evaluations should ask students to comment on the current work load, the effectiveness of the professor's teaching style, the pace of the course and the usefulness of precepts and labs. If professors take their students' responses into account, bad classes will become even more anomalous at the University.
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