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Midterm TA evaluations

by Mary Rose

Make a simple evaluation of your own, or use CTL's suggested form. Pass them out 10-15 minutes before the end of class, and ask a student to collect them and stick them in your box in the department. Make sure they know what you want them to do, and that you'll take their comments seriously. Then leave the room; this lets them talk about things on their own if they want, and lets them say what they really think, as much as they're going to.

Good questions to ask or some version of them:

1. What have you liked best about [or benefitted most from] sections so far this quarter?

2. What do you think could be improved?

3. What specific suggestions about future sections this quarter? This could be topics you would like covered more clearly, or discussion or lecture activities used earlier in the quarter that you want to happen again, or suggestons for how discussions or lectures should go, or anything else you think of.

When you get them back, you'll read things like I want more lecture and from another student I want more discussion.You can't please everyone.

Take any super-critical comments with a grain of salt.  Such comments that I've received have been:

Bad discussion leader. All she does is repeat what the last person said and then wait for someone else to say something.

Doesn't seem like she knows what she's talking about. Gave us wrong answers to questions asked.

There is always some bit of truth in these comments. The first comment made me more aware of the mechanics of how I was running discussions, and I tried to throw the student comment or question back to other students, to get them to talk to each other. The second made me prepare much more thoroughly for sections, and they got a lot better. Think about what you can do to improve these perceptions, but try not to think of yourself as a bad person or bad teacher because of them. First, you're still learning how to teach and doing so takes time, and second, some people are bad at giving constructive criticism and go way overboard.

And one that I took really seriously:

She plays favorites.

Here's to thick skin...