Legal Commentary

So, I just finished teaching my final class of the semester! (Of course that means I have exam writing and exam/paper grading on the horizon, before the focus on research and writing.) But, today I wanted to ask the PrawfsBlawg community about course evaluations. We hand them out to students (to be completed during class meetings) anytime during the last two weeks of classes. Typically, I have waited until the very last class session to hand them out, usually doing so at the beginning of the particular session (the first 10 minutes), but this semester I waited until the very end of the very last class meeting of both of my courses. Is there a preferred strategy? This time around, I found waiting until the very end to be kind of awkward; it made the last class feel sort of transactional. When do you think is the best time to hand out student evaluations? How many other law schools do them online outside of class sessions?

I?m aware of a body of literature that seems to indicate that students are more likely to give high ratings to instructors who are easy graders or who are good looking. Also, my colleague Deborah Merritt has recently published a wonderful article, Bias, the Brain, and Student Evaluations of Teaching, detailing linkages between student evaluations and a professor's nonverbal behavior and discussiong the resultant implications for bias. I haven?t seen, however, anything recommending processes, procedures, or timing.