Reading Your Evaluations From Law Students

Reading course evaluations can be a daunting experience for a new professor.   While in many schools they are only a component of tenure standards, they can be used as a weapon if the scholarship is iffy. Even after tenure, some unscrupulous associate dean can use evaluations as an excuse to overreact or punish his or her enemies. Worse, if you are the most vulnerable faculty, on contract or adjunct, they can be career ending.

The use of evaluations is fraught with peril. There are several studies that suggest that the best way to receive positive teaching evaluations is to be male. One study suggests that students punish online instructors far harsher for the same behaviors when they believe the online instructors are female. The same goes true for racial bias. Also, studies have shown that the more physically attractive the professor, the greater the likelihood of positive evaluations. That’s partly why ratemyprofessor.com has chili pepper rankings, right?

If they are so troubling, why use them? Evaluations are how lazy faculties determine teaching ability, tenure, or retention after tenure. It is far easier to look at student determinations than to look at what’s happening in the classroom. In other words, we will stick with using imperfect measures if meaningful measures take more work. Those applying to law school, take note: You’re doing the same thing looking at rankings.

Because evaluations are here to stay, here is a guide to interpret those annoying or pleasant comments you might receive.

“This is the worst teacher ever. Ever. He just sucks. He can’t teach. He is boring. He sucks.”

Devastating, right? But if you look closely, what has this student said? The student has said he pretty much hates you. What could you do to improve the class? Nothing. There is nothing helpful in the comment. Chalk this one up to personality conflict and move on. However, if all of your comments are like this, you might want to rethink your style.

“This professor is awesome! Best professor ever!”

Well, that warms you up, doesn’t it? But again, this doesn’t tell you anything useful. What did you do right? WHY were you the best prof ever? Put this evaluation in the win category, but don’t let your ego go wild about it.

“Arrogant and condescending.”

This one you’ll have to think about. If it is just one student who claims this, you probably will have to think about whether you answered a question awkwardly at some point, or too quickly dismissed a question. Enough time passes in any course that you may inadvertently send this signal, particularly when the student is feeling very insecure.

However, if you get this comment frequently, something in your teaching style is signaling to the students you are arrogant. The first cause might be that you are, in fact, arrogant. Do you name drop a lot?  Do you read from your own law review articles at length? Do you read comments others have written about your law review articles? If you do these things, I’m going to guess you are not very secure about yourself, and that you are trying too hard to impress upon the students how awesome you think you are.

If upon reflection you don’t think that’s the answer, then think about your student demographic and what biases may have played a role in their perceiving you to be arrogant.

“Too much reading.”

Just ignore this one. Kidding. Students frequently complain about the amount of reading, particularly when they are 1Ls and inclined to read everything. While there are studies that suggest a link between difficulty of a course and evaluation outcome, there is some risk that if you make a course too easy students will think the course is useless.

I could go on, comment by comment, but here are some general rules:

1. Generally, ignore the outlier (but see #3). If there is one person who hates you or thinks your course is amazing, and no one else does, then discount that evaluation.
2. Ignore ad hominems.  Personal attacks are as much about the writer as they are about you. The more hateful, the more it demonstrates the personality issues of the comment’s author.
3. Take seriously comments about method, even if by one student. If a student says you mumble, then work on fixing that. If a student writes that you don’t pay attention to one side of a room, then make sure you correct your leanings.
4. The more specific the comment, the greater the weight. If a student finds that a reading was unhelpful, then you might consider whether students are getting out of it that which you want. If the comment is “the book sucks,” then you might discount that to a great degree. Of course, if you wrote the book, the student just HAS to be wrong.
5. Compare your evaluations across courses, and over time, not with the general population of courses. If you teach a mandatory course, for example, then you’ll probably want to compare your evaluations with colleagues who teach the same course. In other words, comparing “light and fluffy” law with “mandated professional responsibility with MPRE kicker” won’t be helpful. Your associate dean might be foolish enough to do this, but don’t make that mistake.
6. Double check for a class “mood.” If you teach a first-year class, you can compare your evaluations with those of other professors who teach the same students, then compare across sections. This may indicate if you have a particularly friendly or hostile group, relatively speaking.
7. Look at the total number of responses and compare with the total number of enrolled students. Evaluations are particularly unhelpful if you have a class of 40 and only get 10 responses. In super small classes, the evaluation set as a whole may be unhelpful.
8. Even if your evaluations are stellar, continue to work on how to improve your teaching. If your evaluations are poor, just remember that every class is a new beginning. The prior evaluations set the bar low, so you can surprise them.
9. Read What the Best Law Teachers Do. This book is full of helpful suggestions by professors who consistently perform well as teachers.
10. Use my teaching evaluation suggestions.

I’m not saying that if you have great evaluations that you didn’t earn them. Nor am I saying that if you have terrible ones that you should ignore them. I’m saying that comparing your overall score with those of your colleagues doesn’t yield as much important information as you might achieve by drilling deeper into the results, carefully separating the noise from the meaningful data.

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LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here. Email him at [email protected].