Robert Perry Asks:

I am an ESL lecturer in Korea. I have received very high evaluations from my students in the past but this last semester a few classes gave me some poor evaluations. These poor evaluations came from upper level classes. How much weight should be given to these evaluations? I find it quite discouraging. In this one class I have received 100's on my overall scores and I can not think of what I have done that much different to deserve the low evaluations. I think there might be as much relationship between these evaluations and the teachers actual teaching ability as there are between the students' attitudes?

I have changed my ways a bit in the class, but I do not think I should treat my students as customers. I have integrity and do not want to get into the mode of teaching for the evaluation

Dear Robert:

Thank you for a great question! Please do not feel discouraged that this semester you received some poor evaluations from students. Many times, students can use the evaluation process against a teacher and complain because they do not like the teacher or the way he/she graded their assignments. You need to look at all of the students' evaluations, and look at how many of them gave you poor marks. If, for example, you had 70 evaluations and only 2 or 3 were negative, then overall, you still have a very high percentage of students who appreciated your course. Even so, I have found from my own experience that even with a small number of poor evaluations, I always look at those as well to see where the concerns were and then use this information to change or modify my teaching strategies. The successful teachers are those who take constructive criticism and take it to heart and then make the necessay modifications to their teaching program. As I tell my students, "Learning is a lifelong process." I also apply this same belief to myself as well, and encourage all educators to do the same.
Dr. Yanni Zack