Re: OT - legal ramifications of web pages

Julia Altshuler wrote:

> The whole subject of teacher evaluations must be a huge one.  

It is, Lia.  When I have TA'd (Biology), I always received the 
evaluations at the end of semester, after the grades have been turned 
in.  I found it to be useful, and the evals definitely correlated with 
my impression of the classes themselves.  For example, I had 3 classes 
with 25 students each.  Two of the groups were terrific - intelligent, 
interested, highly motivated, everything a teacher could ask for.  The 
other group had a couple of really smart but antisocial kids in it, and 
the rest were there to pass time.  I got superlative evaluations from 
the first group and mediocre ones from the second (including the 
infamous "She made me think").  While there were valid critiques in 
there (I have a tendency to get carried away and stray or go to higher 
levels than they are ready for), a vast majority of them had to do with 
how "tough" the class was when it should've been easy.

I was most likely tougher on the kids than the average TA.  I felt that 
 if these folks were going to be scientists/physicians, their reasoning 
skills ought to be solid, and they should be analytical in their 
approach.  The questions I gave them on quizzes and exams were 
practically never straight out of the book, but easy enough to answer if 
they had been paying attention and understood the concepts. 
Unfortunately, there were a lot of students who didn't appreciate the 
effort.

Suja