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(Prof. Chrol apologizes for the earlier version of the title, which has now been updated. The title change will be addressed in the session)

This paper will serve as a defensive complement and bridge between the papers on working with administration to create an assessment narrative and on how to improve pedagogy. It will also highlight some of the issues raised in the past, present and future of Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) that heads the panel that relate to protecting instructors in relation administration, students as well as themselves. 

Student evaluations are a significant part of assessing the performance of a teacher, despite known problems.  Students in a consumer mindset may have a skewed sense of what they think works for them, be it a teacher not respecting their learning style (learning styles debunked e.g. Riner and Willingham 2010; students faith in learning styles Newton and Miah 2017), not being kind enough (Bassi 2019), not ‘professional’ enough (Spooren 2010) or frequently not white or male enough (Williams 2007, Peterson 2019, Chaves and Mitchell 2020).  When SETs aren’t mandatory, it skews the evaluations to rants and raves, and students anticipating low grades tend to deliver low evaluations (Ewing 2012, Zabaleta 2007). Even though SETs do not connect to student learning (Uttl, White, Gonzalez 2017), and it is a known problem to use student evaluations for promotion and tenure decisions, SETs persist as a common tool (Huston 2006, Gourley 2019, Reinsch, Goltz and Hietapelto 2020). At many institutions having a flawed system producing dubious results is the only game in town, especially with falling enrollments caused by falling birthrates.  The first portion of this paper will present practical techniques to protect against unfair criticism when dealing with administrators. Through some note keeping and enlisting colleagues merely as archivists, some of the potential problems coming from above may be mitigated.

The middle portion of the paper will present techniques for moderating and mitigating potential problems mid-semester.  Creating multi-factor midterm evaluations specific to an instructor and to a class gives insight into potential concerns and serves as a safety valve so students believe that their voices matter.  Coupled with explicit delineation of pedagogical philosophies and techniques — letting the students see the ‘man behind the curtain’ — midterm evaluations can defuse tensions and humanize a professor to students, and shape the delivery of content to the class. By lancing pedagogical boils early, unmerited criticisms are at best diminished, or at worst, hedged against by the techniques brought up in the first third of the paper.

Finally, considering how infrequently the baleful eye of an administrative Sauron actually acts upon our lives as teachers, the third portion of the paper will address the wicked gnomes with eidetic memory who live inside us and in the wee hours of the night whisper recollections of our pedagogical infelicities. It is a psychological truism that negative emotions enhance recollection of details (Kensinger 2009). As such, even the most blatantly inappropriate narrative comment may sometimes be recalled verbatim (cf. the paper title).  It may be tempting to merely dispose of all the criticism (Gourley and Madonia 2021). Nonetheless, just because someone is a jerk doesn’t necessarily mean they are wrong. To paraphrase Pliny the Elder (Pl. Ep. 3.5.10), there is no evaluation so bad there is not some good in it. We will address sifting fair from unfair evaluations, growing in our pedagogy where appropriate, thickening our skin where not.