Once history professor Edward Jocque receives his stack of Student Instructional Rating System, or SIRS, forms after entering his final grades, he takes the time to carefully look through the responses.
After sifting through the evaluations with responses on extreme ends of the spectrum, Jocque said he uses the forms to help improve his class, adding that he once changed the structure of his final exam based on SIRS suggestions.
“I think it makes for good input, and I pay attention to them myself,” Jocque said. “I don’t know how other professors do them.”
The process after students fill out the SIRS forms varies in different departments, but generally the evaluations first are reviewed by the chair or director of the department or program, said Doug Estry, associate provost for undergraduate education.
Other than providing an evaluation of the instructor’s performance, Estry said SIRS forms — which were created and implemented in 1979 — are used to make changes within courses and also are one piece of criteria administrators use to determine tenure and promotions for professors.
English professor Jyotsna Singh said although she finds the SIRS forms valuable and important, she would prefer a format that is more qualitative than quantitative. Singh said she believes the current numbers-based format doesn’t give a coherent picture of the student’s response.
“If you ask somebody to write one paragraph on your class, you learn more,” Singh said, adding students in her department write essay-type evaluations along with the SIRS forms.
The evaluations became available for students to fill out online in 2003, Estry said. In fall 2011, the policy changed so students that do not fill out the forms have their final grades sequestered for a week following the posting of final grades, he said.
“What we’ve found is our response rate to the electronic SIRS went from about 17-18 percent to about 90 percent,” Estry said.
Being able to voice her opinion about class structures and assignments is the reason kinesiology senior Brooke Bittner said she puts a lot of effort into filling out her SIRS forms. Bittner said the approachability of a professor is a big factor for her, so the evaluations provide an outlet to voice any concerns with the instructor.
“It’s easy to put it on the SIRS forms instead of going up to them and saying like, ‘Hey, you graded this paper too hard,’” she said.
Unlike Bittner, international relations senior Chris Adamczyk said he’s indifferent to filling out the evaluations. Adamczyk said his ratings tend to heavily favor one side of the spectrum depending on the instructor.
“If they took them away, I wouldn’t notice,” Adamczyk said.
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