Student Opinion Questionnaires starting soon are for instructors’ eyes only
Editor
Student Opinion Questionnaires (SOQ), an instructor review system done every term, take place Nov. 9-13 at Washtenaw Community College. Instructors will view the results next semester, but the results remain confidential from students — and not all instructors agree with that policy. The SOQs results, which include numbered scores on various categories and a comment section, are not published for students to view because of a stipulation between the WCC administration and faculty union, WCCEA. Some instructors say the results should remain unpublished because the results can contain personal material. “I feel like when you write something anonymously, you don’t realize that you’re writing about a human being and a person who may really care about her job, or care about her students,” instructor George-Sturges said. “Because students sometimes say things that are not constructive and are very hurtful to the instructor, I just don’t feel like that should be public knowledge.” However, other instructors think published SOQ results would be helpful for students trying to choose an instructor — a better source than Web sites such as ratemyprofessors.com “In the college I went to, they did publish the results (of student polls),” instructor Mohammed Abella said. “That’s how I picked my teachers.” “There’s some good questions on there like, ‘How often does your instructor miss class or start late,’” instructor Ross Strayer said of the SOQs. “And then you get a lot of responses that are totaled up. On ratemyprofessors, some instructors only have five or six responses. I just think, why not show students the SOQs? Maybe not the comments, although I think the comments are fine too to show.” English instructor Julie Kissel concurs that some sort of official rating system would be helpful to students, and suggests “general categories to classify instructors within certain ranges.” “If it was range-based instead of specific, then you could avoid the, ‘I’m higher than you sort of thing’ — I can sense where a lot of instructors would be really uncomfortable with that. But it’s not really about our comfort, either.”
