Teaching – Course evals on the first day of class? by Yen Loh, English

Like newspapers, which may be read one day over morning coffee and may be used, as my grandmother did, to wrap vegetables the next day, student evaluations have second, subsequent, and multiple lives. In the classroom, student evaluations are usually resurrected at the mid and endpoints of the semester, but discussing prior course evaluations with your current students at the beginning of the semester can also help in telling the course’s story and the argument it’s trying to make through the act of re-seeing course readings and assignments. As such, and while issues concerning student evaluations are many and deep, they, along with other sources of information such as peer observations and movements in the field, can be one folder of notes among others. David Perlmutter offers some tips in How to Read a Student Evaluation.