Students can thank Senate Bill 389 for the trip back down memory lane the last couple weeks.

The standardized, bubble-in teacher evaluations that students have been penciling through were part of a state bill that requires colleges and universities to make public additional consumer information.

The bill requires Southern to post the credentials of both full and part-time faculty, post the schedules of classes with the names of instructors and post the results of student ratings of instructors on a public Web site, according to Dr. John Messick, vice president for academic affairs.

The ratings for instructors will be available online so students can have access to them before registering for next fall’s classes, by March or early April, Messick said.

The bubble-in forms were created by a evaluation system managed by the Idea Center at Kansas State University.

According to Messick, The Idea Center will take the results of student evaluations and adjust scores by discipline.

“I think it’s probably understandable that maybe in some disciplines students would rate instructors using different criteria than other disciplines, so they correct by discipline. They’ll have some questions in there about student evaluations and work habits,” he said.

According to Messick, it will protect faculty from “spurious” results.

Not all schools in the state will be doing testing the same way. The Coordinating Board for Higher Education, the group responsible for interpreting the legislation and developing rules is giving each school “latitude in developing their own questions,” Messick said.

David Jenkins, assistant professor of foreign languages, said any opportunity that a student has to give feedback is worthwhile. Still, he doesn’t believe that education satisfaction should be viewed in the same view as buying a product in a store.

“It’s give and take,” he said. “Students need to accept a certain responsibility for what they take into their education, rather than accept passively what their professors give them. I don’t think of education as something that can be consumed. I think of it as an interaction.”

In the past, Jenkins has had some negative reviews placed online on the professor review Web site, Rate My Professor, www.ratemyprofessor.com.

“A general rule of them is that those who do well in class won’t have a reason to be disgruntled,” he said.

Jenkins said he’s adjusted his curriculum to feedback given from previous evaluations. He said past students had a problem with the length of exams so he made them shorter. He’s also had students say they wanted more group work and less lecturing so he’s included more group work in his curriculum.

Jenkins said if out of a class of 20 students he gets three negative reviews and 10 positive, he should look into it.

“I have to incorporate a variety of activities,” he said. “But I realize I can’t please everybody all the time.”

Jill Greer, assistant professor of sociology and anthropology, preferred using the previous years’ student survey that was created by each department. According to Greer, her department’s rating system was more qualitative and had more open-ended questions.

Greer also opposes the new teacher evaluation system because the mandated teacher evaluations were unfunded.

“In times of financial hardship the state has added to the burden,” she said. “It seems absurd to be wasting these type of (financial) resources.”

Greer said the evaluation scores published online could also interfere with academic freedom.

“If you say something that might make students uncomfortable, you could be penalized for that,” Greer said. “Part of educating students is going outside of your comfort zone.”

SB 389 includes requirements for consumer information and Greer disagrees with looking at students as consumers.

“I don’t like the equation of students as consumers,” she said. “Education is not a product.”

Ruth Garner, associate professor of communication, believes students should be able to find information on instructors before they take their class.

“I go online and check if I’m going to buy a new car, so the students should be able to read reviews about professors too,” she said.

The evaluation answers received from the standardized test cannot be used for the purpose of promotion and tenure; feedback that contributes to those would have to be in a separate form.

According to Messick, Southern is the only school using The Idea Center evaluation system, though many schools are using similar questions on the evaluation.