Students fill them out every semester, but how important are they and how do they work?
At the end of every semester, students are encouraged to fill out the Student Instructional Rating System (SIRS).
Some students find these evaluations to be a nuisance, while administrators at The University of Memphis claim the evaluations are taken seriously.
The SIRS reports are used to evaluate the teaching habits of instructors at The U of M. The University has been doing this for more than 20 years.
The form contains different areas for the students to fill out, including instructor involvement, student interest, student-instructor interaction, course demand and course organization. There is a space for teachers to make up their own questions and on the back side there is a personal response section for the students to fill out.
The responses from the report are summarized statistically using a computer service.
After the reports have been evaluated, they become the private property of the instructor.
The forms are then filed away and cannot be disclosed due to The University’s privacy clause.
“It’s just like a student’s personal file,” said Ken Lambert, president of the Faculty Senate. “You wouldn’t want someone you don’t know to be able to access your grades.”
Scarlett Summers, manager of Academic Personnel Services in the Office of the Provost, said these results are a measuring tool used in determining which professor gets a raise or merits tenure.
“In essence, students are the customers,” said Summers. “It’s like customer service in that it allows us to determine promotions and firings.”
According to Summers, if a teacher is part-time and scores poorly on the SIRS, there is a chance that teacher can get fired. If that same part-time professor scores highly on the SIRS, there is a chance for a raise. If a professor is tenured and scores badly on the SIRS, a way to improve student evaluations would be sought, Summers said.
These evaluations are given to students to fill out at the end of each semester. The University does not allow the teachers to give out the evaluations during the week of exams. More than 60,000 reports are processed each semester, according to Summers.
“This is your feedback that we get,” Summers said. “I encourage it.”
