I opened up ratemyprofessors.com last night. I usually enjoy reading student’s comments. Even the bad one’s are like, “Professor Wright is a great guy, but his tests are hard, he makes you work and you will do lots of homework.” Which isn’t really bad comment from a professor’s point of view. Here is a link to my ratings. Last night, two new ones made me sad:

Rate my professor can be the worst of social media. People who are really angry can go onto the site and blast someone nameless. They can say whatever they want with little to no filter and the information is public for everyone to see. This website can be worse for faculty from marginalized groups. At least they have taken away the damn Chili. There seems to be some way the faculty can interface with the application and apply a filter. Honestly, I have never cared about it enough to do anything about it.

Personally good or bad, I love student feedback. Its nice to hear what the students have to say about my teaching. Its good to check in with the website. The students use to this website to form their opinions about professors, who to take, etc. If there are terrible things being said about you then it has an affect on students. It does. They read it. So should you. While it might not be something that should ever matter, it is something to keep track of, read, digest, and take action where appropriate.

In a normal semester, I am OCD about collecting student feedback. I collect it non-stop. It is an easy way to correct issues that pop up while they are still small. This semester was different I just forgot to collect the feedback with the zealousness I normally do, and my rate my professor profile took a beating. For the students who I lost this semester, when I realized I had lost them, it was too late to do anything. Lesson learned: Collect Student (from all students) Feedback as Often as Possible. Here is the good, the bad, and the ugly of how this semester went down.

The Good: This semester there were a few groups of students who I caught: hook, line, and sinker! The students bought into the madness which is my classroom, benefited from it, and enjoyed the class. Let’s say half the class fits into this category. These were the students who came to office hours, asked lots of questions, participated in the class forum, wrote emails, etc.

To me there were four students who I really reached. So there are always a number of A/B students in each class that will learn the material and have a general positive experience in the class. As long as you respect these students and are moderately nice to them these students will give positive reviews if they review you at all. But in every class there are a handful of students that may or may not do well for any and every reason. Its my goal to bring them into the fold, help raise their game, and launch their careers. Of course on the flip side, there are always students that are going to do poorly no matter what you do – often times for reasons out of your control. This is a theory that I picked up in a talk by Dr Jessica Santangelo from Hofstra University – No doubt, when she explains it, its better, makes more sense, and is nicer than my crude explanation.

In a normal semester, it is my goal to reach those students that need the support, give it to them (part of that is group work), and launch them out of physics one onto the world. My goal is to be successful with 75% of the students that fit into this category in my class. Its a difficult group to reach and any success is good success. Its messy. Often times the shit rolls right out of the classroom, into office hours, and into deep life discussions. This year was no different in that sense. There were about four or five students this semester that I feel I “reached”, changed a trajectory, and ultimately was successful.

The Bad: Unfortunately my success rate was down. There were more students that slipped through the cracks. I wasn’t there for them and they achieved a poor grade, withdrew, or was unsatisfied. The realization that this happened hurt. I can go on about COVID, my step-father passing, etc, but the reality is that at least one student felt “dumb” because of me and commented that “Overall, worst professor I have taken so far.” There were definitely more students that felt that way too, I am sure of it. Not only did I not reach this student but I likely did quite the opposite.

I wasn’t “on” the students as much as normal. I wasn’t checking on them constantly. I wasn’t asking for feedback non-stop. I let the students go and enjoyed my new found quality life with my family. And it failed at least for these two students.

Like many professors, I was concerned about cheating in this online age. I decided to take a group approach to assessment (exams, etc) for the semester. I would give them difficult problems to work through and then help them work through the problems. I’d give good grades as long as I detected the students working together, asking the right questions and on teams. But that also meant that some students would take advantage of it. And that some students would refuse to engage. I tried to manage it. I failed. I made that student feel “dumb”. And there is more than just that one as I reflect on my semester.

There were three or four times during the semester I came down hard on students. Usually it came about when the students were copying work without understanding what they were copying (e.g., using code from another student or internet source without understanding what it did, copying text for a paper, copying a portion of a exam, etc). Copying is okay most of the time as long as you understand what you are copying, reference it, and enhance it – that is the only way to code. But maybe my assumptions were wrong. Maybe in my zealousness to push the students, make sure they worked hard, I went too far and stepped on them. This student review seems to agree.

The Ugly: There has been numerous training opportunities and discussion over the last 9 months due to the sudden change in how we teach.

I have definitely participated in trainings at least at some level. I have been frustrated in general with the training I have attended because it tends to be on entry level material that I know or have mostly deduced. When we get to the good “meaty” questions I feel like people don’t have good answers. I found myself sitting through training sessions mostly bored waiting for the opportunity to ask the question I want to ask. I ask. Then I am underwhelmed by the answer. This isn’t the fault of the person who is doing the training. I know enough about online learning to know the landscape and be a general pain in the ass, but not enough enough to be effective. And this isn’t any particular group. I did one-off training all year long with different organizations. It was mostly the same.

Assessment was/is my big question. Twitter peeps were recommending me to stop giving exams and start looking for other ways to assess. That is what I did. I was moderately happy with my results until I read this feedback. I am looking forward to the AAPT meeting in a few days. I am going to ask a lot of questions and hopefully learn.

One of the sticky points about this year’s poor rate my professor evaluation is that it resonances with feedback about my teaching style I received from a colleague. We had a heated argument about many things including my teaching style. The professor mentioned that I was uncomfortable and confusing among a few other harsh words. This professor isn’t wrong. I do like to change my teach methods often. I try to use a mash up of active learning strategies and my own personal experiences from the business world. Half the time I am down right incoherent. I use cognitive dissonance likely too much. In this case too much is too much. I lost a number of students this semester, because I was too chaotic, too uncomfortable.

One student said something like “I did great this semester, except in Professor XX’s class. The test’s were unfair…” (BTW not me) I had commented that “We are all learning here.  Even the professors.” And then the student said something that haunts me “he would be learning at my expense in this case”.

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To the student who wrote those evaluations, “I am sorry. I wish we could do it again.” I learned this semester, but I think I did that at your expense.