I just wrapped up T3 (Trimester 3) at Krea University, and my second academic year as an Assistant Professor, and figured I’d share something I’ve been working on. The dashboard below (best viewed by clicking on the link to view it in a new page) pulls together anonymous end-of-course feedback from my three courses this academic year: Introduction to Sociological and Anthropological Thought (SOCL 306), Sociology and STS through Science Fiction (SOCL 346), and Social Media and Society (SOCL 348). In addition to institutional evaluations, I’ve incorporated anonymized information from an open-ended SurveyMonkey survey (that my former Dept. Chair at Nazareth University, Prof. Kim McGann had designed). The dashboard lets you filter by course, read through the student responses, and see some aggregated patterns across a few questions. I’ve tried to keep the interface simple and the methodology transparent (there’s a tab on the dashboard itself that explains how the data was “processed”; and spoiler alert, it’s pretty basic).
I’m sharing this publicly for a few reasons. First, it’s a reflective exercise for me — having the feedback in one place that I can occasionally revisit, makes it easier to think about what worked and what didn’t. Second, it’s an experiment in pedagogical transparency; I’ve long felt that teaching evaluations are one of the more opaque parts of academic life, both for instructors and for students, and I’d rather have mine visible than not. The only time I’ve ever submitted ~50-60 page teaching portfolios has been when I’ve applied for jobs. Third - there’s always the possibility that it could elicit constructive feedback on my pedagogy, which I’m always happy to receive.
No identifying information had been collected in the due course of putting together the data that was used as a basis for this dashboard. Institutional evaluation data is anonymized by default. If you’re a colleague who’d like to talk about any of this — the course design, the student responses, the dashboard itself — please feel free to reach out.