It’s the time of the quarter when CTECs loom (you can start filling them out online Monday, Nov. 22), and so here’s a history lesson and information about some changes in the system.
History: Last year, Prajwal Ciryam ran for Associated Student Government academic vice president, and part of his platform was to require professors to post CTECs online. I thought this reasonable.
But I also thought that fair’s fair: If profs have to post their CTECs, then students should have to fill them out. Although professorial reluctance to post CTECs can seem like an attempt to hide bad teaching, some good profs don’t post their CTECs because of low response rates. Student apathy causes inaccurately negative evaluations, as only the thoroughly pissed-off bother to write comments.
(As to the question of why more students don’t complete online CTECs, I gather from observation and The Daily that much of the student body is just too busy programming their iPods, nursing hangovers and talking loudly on their cell phones about last night’s hookup to be bothered.)
As I was planning an irate letter to The Daily on this topic (CTECs, not hookups), the CTEC advisory committee beat me to the punch.
So, changes:
Starting this quarter, you have to fill out your CTECs; if you don’t, then next quarter you will be blocked from viewing CTECs.
I spoke with Nedra Hardy, the senior assistant registrar who administers the CTECs. She would put it the other way around: Students who fill out their CTECs will be allowed to view CTECs. But whether you want to put a positive spin or a coercive one on it, it’s the same result. If you don’t do the work of evaluating courses and teachers, then you don’t benefit from the work done by fellow students.
Of course, there are ways around it: Look over the shoulder of a friend. But CTECs are the primary way that students have a voice about teaching at NU, and so students should strive to write good CTECs.
By "good CTECs," I don’t mean ones praising the prof or TA. A good CTEC is one which provides useful feedback for the TA, the prof, the department and the dean’s office, as well as other students.
To that end you should avoid "Beavis and Butthead" CTECs, where things either suck or are cool.
Instead, you should concentrate on one overriding question: what did the course promise at the outset and did it deliver?
If it did, what about the professor’s methods enabled success? If it didn’t, why didn’t it?
Be polite, be specific, be concrete and so demonstrate that your evaluation is the engaged response of a serious student and so should be taken seriously. It might seem like a burden to be required to fill a CTEC out, but it’s a burden worth bearing.
Bill Savage is a lecturer in English and a Weinberg College Adviser. He can be reached at [email protected].
