Perusing through the paper I came across the article “Evaluating Teaching Evaluations.” To my surprise, there was no mention of the student perspective on the matter.

It probably takes about 15 minutes for a student to complete an evaluation. If you add in the time it takes for the professor to exit the classroom, the proctor to provide instruction and hand out the appropriate materials, each student turning back in the materials, and then inviting the professor back to the room, you are looking at about 30 minutes, on average, for a class to complete an evaluation.

For those students who complete 120 hours, they will spend about 20 hours, almost a full day, filling out evaluation forms while here at NIU. That may not seem significant when spread out over four years. However, if you also consider the amount of instruction time lost to holidays, breaks, class cancellations, students being absent for various reasons, so on and so forth, it all adds up.

Allowing students to evaluate their professors is a vital benefit, but the amount of time spent doing so under the current system seems like a poor use of class time. Surely there must be a better way. NIU is a great institution. If you think about everything that goes on at NIU, and all of the different people involved, it is amazing. NIU is constantly evolving in an ever-changing environment. Now the time has come to change the evaluation system.

Utilizing online evaluations would offer many benefits to the university. It would reduce the amount of paper and ink used by the university, save administrators and students time, allow for better use of class time, increase efficiency and save NIU money.

Aaron Stahly

senior political science major