Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Law Students Blogs -> Nuts & Boalts

Law Students

: Nuts & Boalts

Dude. Enough With the Eval Requests Already

If you are a Boalt student, your @berkeley inbox contains the following email:

"Please take a minute to complete your teaching evaluations. Not only are they important for feedback to faculty, but they also ensure you will have access to the online exam interface. Please do them now so you don't have to email me in a panic on Monday when you can't access your exams. Thank you! "

Anonymous in comments just asked:

Did we just get told that if we don't fill out evaluations, we won't be able to take exams? Not cool.

My first reaction was exactly the same.

My second reaction was to ask: why can't we submit evaluations AFTER we take the professor's exam? That's a rather huge part of the course . . . isn't it? And if a hypothetical professor's exam (*ahem* Torts *cough*) contains typos, confuses the gender of parties in the fact pattern, contains a deeply ambiguous set of instructions, and puts other stumbling blocks in the way of students' ability to perform, shouldn't that information make it into the evaluation process? Especially since student feedback is apparently so important, and taken so seriously? (*cough* the last five years of TeleBears *ahem*)

My third reaction was to wonder: is there some way Boalt's obsessive desire for student evaluations (today's was the fourth email I have received) can be converted to leverage for the release of the evaluations' narratives?

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on May 01, 2008 (boomark / email).