Moses, I was encouraged to hear that you seek the collaboration of ASUU in the venture.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, September 30, 2019 9:22:49 AM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - How to Resurrect Nigeria's Dead Public Universities
Sent: Monday, September 30, 2019 9:22:49 AM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - How to Resurrect Nigeria's Dead Public Universities
Please be cautious: **External Email**
But Gloria, the debate around student teaching evaluations is not and has never been about their overall usefulness but rather about if and how they should be used and weighted for promotion purposes. That is where the controversy resides. In particular, because of the issues of gender and race, among others, unearthed by several researches pointing to its imperfections, there is a perennial, recurring debate around how much weight should be given to it in career decisions.
No system is perfect. That is precisely why the current or emerging consensus around student evaluation is that they should be used with caution, bearing the familiar caveats and issues in mind. Even the statement you pointed to, which I read last week, does not call for jettisoning student evaluation but rather that institutions consider its problems, adjust for those problems, and make their own decisions in determining its weight in tenure and promotion cases. By the way, as you know, even the whole tenure process of evaluating research (and teaching) output is flawed and has its own issues but no one is saying we should abandon tenure review. So your saying student teaching evaluations should not be implemented in Nigeria (and I presume in the States) shows that you're out of step with where the debate is.
The key is to be aware of the limitations and problems of student teaching evaluations and factor them into how we use them. Already, many institutions, including mine, are using student evaluations with the appropriate caution, in conjunction with other factors, but also with the limitations and imperfections in mind. Most institutions now separate the tendentious, the personal, and the petty from the substantive, and weigh the sample size, participation rate, and preponderance of particular feedback, etc. And in my institution, administrators use the student evaluation early on as a tool for advising junior faculty on ways to improve their pedagogical craft. That seems to be the national the trend.
The student teaching evaluation, like all other forms of evaluations, including grading and grade assignments, has its issues but it remains useful for several reasons. For one, it keeps professors honest. Second, it gives students a voice. And third, and for me most important, anonymous student evaluation is a good, honest feedback mechanism, warts and all.
I for one have found comments from my students quite useful and have used them over the years to make several positive changes to my teaching. I am not a big fan of the numbers and scorings but I have also noticed that as I have responded to constructive student critiques and comments, my numbers have also gone up. Of course, I, like many university admins, do not pay attention to the personal and petty comments of students.
Bringing all this to Nigeria, I think we can all agree that when you import a practice you have to modify and domesticate it to your own peculiar environment. Nigeria is not America. That is precisely why, in my proposal, I stated that all academic stakeholders, including ASUU, have to agree on how student evaluations should be weighted. As race is not an issue in Nigeria, such a discussion has to include how gender constraints on student evaluation results, especially in an intensely patriarchal society, would be considered and factored into how the results are interpreted and weighted.
Student evaluations remain a useful accountability metric and a way to democratize the pedagogical process despite its problems. If domesticated properly and adjusted for what we now know to be its limitations, it would be a great, revolutionary change in a Nigerian university system sorely lacking in professorial accountability and in student participatory agency.
By the way, a few Nigerian universities have in the last few years already implemented student evaluations. I know that my alma mata, Bayero University, did so during the VC-ship of Professor Jega. I'm not sure though if it is weighted for promotion decisions. There is a federal university in the Southeast (I forget which one) that uses student teaching evaluation and assigns it 25 percent in the teaching section of the promotion file. I know because I evaluated someone for promotion from that institution.
Even if the decision in Nigeria, if it becomes a national policy mandated by the NUC, is to implement anonymous student teaching evaluation without using it for promotion (which is really where the controversy and problems lie), it would be still be a critical, useful tool of accountability as well as a great feedback loop for lecturers who want to improve their teaching. They can skip the scores and petty comments and go to the substantive and thoughtful critiques and feedback.
Finally, saying that students should complain to the deans, with all due respect, demonstrates how out of touch you are with the death and dearth of teaching in Nigerian universities. What if I told you that the deans themselves are implicated in the pedagogical rot and that they too abdicate their teaching and mentoring responsibilities? And what if I told you that in fact some of the deans and HODs who take teaching seriously and realize the importance of accountability in that aspect of our work, are frustrated because they cannot correct or advise peers or enforce any ameliorative measures on them either in response to student complaint or in response to peer observations? It is HODs who are even the most frustrated because in Nigeria, once someone becomes a full professor no one (not their HOD or the dean) can compel them to show up in class, meet with advisees, undertake any academic duties, or even come to campus.
When I was an undergraduate, a few of my lecturers would only show up twice or thrice in an entire semester! No one could do anything about it. Not the HOD, not the dean. On a few occasions I remember some students telling the HOD, who in some cases was even junior to the offending professor and so could not even convey the complaint to the latter, much less ask them to change their ways. In fact, some of the offending professors were ex-deans and ex-HODs.
I wish we had consequential student evaluations that impacted promotion decisions back in my day in the university. Full professors may still have been immune from its accountability effect but at least non-full professors would have been compelled to at least show up in class as scheduled.
On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 1:32 AM Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu> wrote:
--"On student evaluation of their professors this is a mainly American idea, it isnot practised in the UK and I do not know which European country practises it. Generally students may not be experienced enough to do justice to this demand. Professors risk being victimized by lazy student who want cheap grades for lazy work and therefore gang up against their professors." OA
Not too long ago a student of one of my classes retorted that she found student evaluation ofprofessors rather insulting, when reminded to fill out evaluation forms. Indeed the US must be the only country in the world with this system.
Nigeria does not need this potentially divisive and counter-productive system that is often politicized. Studentsshould be encouraged to complain to the Dean and work through other avenues. It is a flawed system.Female professors are often rated differently from their male counterparts and a bunch of unspecified variables creep into the assessment. The American Sociological Association and the American Historical Association have both expressed concerns, and even if they did not, caution should be applied.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
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