I just received last semester's teaching evaluations. The last time I read my teaching evaluations, I dealt with some complex emotions. Some of the feedback felt constructive, but a lot of it felt mean. How do I sift through the comments and find what's helpful within them?
First, ask yourself why you need or want to read the evaluations in the first place. What questions do you have about your teaching, and how might the evaluations help you answer them? Formal, end-of-semester teaching evaluations may not be the only or the best way to answer those questions. (More on alternatives below!) Teaching evaluations are one tool we have to assess teaching, but they have their flaws. Student evaluations of teaching can reflect gender and racial biases and can be unreliable in other ways, as well. So don’t look at your teaching evaluations just to look at them, particularly if they’ve been a source of stress in the past.
At the same time, the written portions of teaching evaluations can potentially offer a useful window into how your students felt about their experiences in your class, and they might contain insights you could use to enhance your teaching next time around. But that written feedback can also be where you’ll encounter the most emotionally taxing material produced by students under significant stress at the end of the semester. So, if student evaluations of teaching have been a negative trigger for you in the past, I wouldn’t recommend just right diving in.
But if you’re curious about whether there’s anything to learn, there’s an easy solution: Ask a trusted friend or colleague to look through the evaluations for you. They can identify themes across the evaluations as a whole, then have a conversation with you about them. That way, you can learn what there is to learn from the evaluations while filtering out unkind or irrelevant information. If you feel comfortable, give them some information about what you found especially stressful about reading the evaluations last time, so they can be aware as they decide what to share with you.
Derek Attig is the Assistant Dean of Career Development & Professional Development for the Graduate College. After earning a PhD in History here at Illinois, Derek worked in nonprofit communications and instructional development before joining the Graduate College.
