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The Didactron
Educators' Fiction
Life in a High-Tech Teaching-Learning Space
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The rooms and spaces with moveable walls were shown on the screen. Rich Huffman entered the number of people to be in the meeting - 12. He entered all infeasible meeting times since he as well as as the others had other appointments. He checked from a menu the general use of the room and the latest possible time for the meeting. The allocated space was shown--A-23 and it flashed repeatedly on the screen. Space was very costly and a relatively simple program was used, a cousin to one that sequences computer programs. It lined them up and advanced those of high priority. As elsewhere in the Didactron, the policy was to optimize use of space, minimize its ownership. Scheduling was largely on a first-come, first serve, basis after regularly scheduled meetings and lectures. Each part of the day had a priority based on physiological and learning rhythms. Priority periods were those when learning was likely to be greatest for the most students. The system rarely diverted anyone from a pre-assigned space, but it would delay a schedule and save prime space for some likely, very important gathering. Of course it sought out spaces to serve the intended group, and based on priority and probable length of the meeting, would occasionally provide space for a few people not previously planned for or invited. The users of all spaces could be read from from the screen at any time. A few showed as one name with dashes indicating the person in charge but not the name of the class or committee. Usually there were experimental courses and occasionally a grievance meeting but such meetings were most often held elsewhere.
He entered: Faculty Meeting and required time: 11 am.
There was the usual banter as the meeting began. It was scheduled for 11 a.m. because lunch served as a massive barrier to any extension of the meeting, even for a few minutes, to resolve any points. The time served to restrict the more outspoken and longer-winded faculty.It was to be an hour-long meeting. Seating was very consistent ... like goats going to milking stalls. The same people were always late, the same always spoke out on the issues, the same were always silent. The conversation always included the quality of the coffee, the status of the snow or gardens, and a volley or two at why such meetings were necessary. The same people would have extended them had it not been for the lunch-hour wall.
Budget topics being sparse, and Richard Huffman's request having been put off for 4 months, Karl Spence had decided to give him a chance to present his class evaluation idea. Karl said as much, then gave the floor to Huffman. Two people clapped, jokingly. Two looked at others with derisive grins. The rest seemed interested.
"Over 6 years of teaching, I have seen rapidly increasing interest in teacher-evaluation. It probably started long ago but at least I've seen its tidal swell. During these years I've become very aware of the ecology of the classroom - the interactions of schedules, time, facilities, teachers, and students. In my classes I sense some proportion of the students there that paid to go to school. They want a degree diploma, not an education. There are some there that hate all learning for some reason (as if they were rats stung while running the maze early in life.) Every so often, due to chance, I've gotten an unusually large percentage of such students in class. (Just as every so often a student gets a schedule full of poor teachers.) I'm a damned good teacher, but even the very best teacher will be handicapped in such a situation. The good students in such a class will also be handicapped.
"I teach five, three-hour courses a year. One of these is a senior level course taught twice a year. I have done this for 6 years so I have a sample - small - but worth discussing.
"I make some changes in my instruction--notes as well as approaches--every quarter, but no one would call them radical. I doubt that my personality has radically changed in that period. Yet, I have very different classes. They are variously introspective, sleepy, rude, and in a few cases attended by those who have experienced in grammar school 'social promotion.' I have evidence now that a teacher evaluation is thus very much a function of the individual class in a particular quarter. A teacher need some average expression, probably the mode of six to eight evaluations, to begin to sense (or have someone else sense) his or her didactic prowess.
"Thus, I have a proposal to make. It is that in addition to student evaluations of teachers, a class, as a whole, be evaluated by the teacher. This will not be the average grade on tests but an assessment of group performances. This evaluation scheme, like each teacher's evaluation, will be known early in the class by the students. The final class evaluation would go to the same mysterious place that all evaluations of teachers go. The ratio of teacher's score of the class to the class's score of the teacher might be very useful. It could be used to adjust or standardize the students' evaluations. I suggest that the criteria be on a numerical scale for each of the following, which we might all weight in terms of perceptions of their importance.
"Such a rating, done by the faculty independently of student evaluations, might allows over time, some of the class bias to be removed from the teacher's performance ratings. It might improve the interactions of the teaching environment.
"What teacher, confronted by an absolutely immobile class, will not revert totally to dispensing information rather than to making exciting combinations of information, processing, and discovery? It is well known that students in grade schools, when taught how to do so, can positively modify teacher behavior. Maybe it is time that we in the university community also notice these findings, and that we proceed to teach and to learn better, together. A class evaluation might not be a bad idea."
"Not a bad idea; I like that" commented one.
"It's just another damned form" said another.
"An exercise," nodded another in agreement.
Ignoring them, Karl Spence asked "How do you see this coming about?"
Rich said, "I'd just like to try it here within our classes. The 10 questions are easily completed once a quarter. The analyses are relatively trivial and can be handled anonymously by computer."
"Are you serious, Rich? You've pulled some tricky things on us in the past and I'm not sure about this one. It sounds plausible, but there is an air of sport to it.As I see it, if I'm crafty enough to figure it out, I can guess what my evaluations from students will be. Then, if I assume they will be poor, I'll give the class a poor evaluation. That will increase, I suppose, my score.
"As I think about it though, if I play this devious game of yours and guess wrong, say they are rotten, and then their evaluations say I'm great, then what happens?" Harold Klink was analyzing destructively as usual.
"I'll not pretend to have resolved all of the computational details. The results could hardly be any worse than the present trivially-simplistic system. I presume that you would get the score they assigned. On the other hand, if you had said they were great (say an average class score of 90-95) and they said you were a lousy teacher, that too would be your score. I think it is in those situations where they say you are lousy and you say they are lousy, that the adjustments would be greatest. Several simple computer statements can handle the scoring. The question, before we go too far with the details, is whether this idea and project are worth pursuing? I'll be willing to work with those interested. If we cannot get it to work here, it may not be worth doing."
"If we don't go to the University with it, it will be a meaningless exercise. They can easily coordinate it, handle the forms, processing, and all the rest. That way it will cut our costs, time, and, most important, have it do something…namely adjust those damned meaningless teacher evaluation forms that produce a potentially harmful number in our folders each year that we teach. I"
Karl cringed at the comment, though he agreed. Here was proposed the start-at-the-top strategy he had used unsuccessfully for many projects over 6 years of teaching and 4 years in industry. He had resolved on this one idea to try a start-at-the-bottom approach. He had considered the do-it-yourself strategy but, having failed at that before, he decided against it. Previously he had done the work, with the intent of working out the details and difficulties and making it easy for this busy overworked group to accept. Such eager endeavor had only brought him accusations of being a loner, uncooperative, and attempting to impose a procedure on the faculty.
He knew he and this idea could get side-tracked, meetinged to death, and lost in the fluffy-slushy administrative cauldron of indecision.
As the word "indecision" came to mind, three faculty stood up and quietly left the room with polite smiles and nods and without comment. It was high noon; the bell tower spoke. It was presumed they had important luncheon appointments. (One was probably going to a matinee with a divorced mother of two.)
"We'll discuss this later," said Karl and the meeting was over.
Karl sat in his office trying to eat part of his lunch.The peanut butter sandwich would not go down. The light was off to discourage students and others from knocking on his door.
"This idea might play right into the hands of someone suing the school," he thought. "Here would be the the official evidence of students claiming poor teaching. On the other hand, the separation of the teacher's judgement from that of the students' might give the faculty a coolant in the potentially hot contest."
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