These are the days in which professional work is being continuously evaluated, assessment made through self-appraisals and peer appraisals. Career promotions are given based on these assessments nowadays, not by the number of years one works in a position as was the practice in many institutions in India and elsewhere. But believe it or not, such a teacher evaluation by students was available for teachers in T K M College of Engineering in the 1960s, which had a very positive result for beginners in teaching like me.
As briefly mentioned earlier, I was appointed as
lecturer in Electrical Engineering at T
K M College of Engineering and I
reported for duty on 9th Sept 1968. I was given a
challenging start to teach the
subject Generation Switchgear and
Protection to the students in the
final year. Many of them
were my very good friends,
staying in the hostel or outside in lodges . As the hostel facilities were
limited and to many of us
coming from middle class families a bit too expensive, quite a few of
the students were staying outside in lodges. Students had to get
the approval of the college
authorities to stay in these lodges and if necessary some of the
advisers could visit these lodges
to ensure that basic amenities
are available in these lodges. I was
staying in these lodges all
along and food was available from the college canteen
on working days and small
restaurants near the college.
Even though I preferred
to be a teacher for reasons
already explained I had my own
problems in facing my students for the first few
days. With the excellent
class notes from my
favourite teacher Madhu Sir and
reasonably good collection of books from the library, I could prepare very well for my classes. From the beginning of my
career, whenever I take
up the teaching of a new subject,
I used to prepare detailed notes for the
lectures by referring to the text books and my class notes, if available.
Often, preparation for one hour of lecture used to take
three to four hours. By the time I
completed a course in a semester, at
least three or four
200 pages note books would
be used for preparing these notes. Whenever I give
these courses any time later, these lecture
notes proved to be very handy
as basic material to which I used to add
something more here and there writing on the
margins. These note books, if edited properly, could have been converted to
full text books as I used to refer
several books before writing
the notes in my own style. In
the early classes, I used to refer
these notes occasionally
but later these note
books used to remain on the table
like the magic wand of a magician as a confidence booster. Old habits
die hard. Even today , when I am supposed
to talk for 10 minutes to inaugurate something, I never miss writing
what I will be speaking as the inaugural
address , take a printout of this and
keep it in my pocket. We do not
know how
to talk for hours together
without any topic like our great
politicians. I have even
wondered how some of our colleagues go to the class with a few chalk pieces alone or carrying
big text books to the class room.
Fortunately , my
junior friends were very friendly
and they did not play any pranks on me and so my confidence grew as days
progressed. After about two months, a
notice was circulated showing that a particular day was allotted as a day
for student evaluation of teachers. All
the teachers, young and old were asked to collect a set of cyclostyled questionnaires from the
office of the Head
of the Department which had to be
got filled by the students in our class anonymously. This questionnaire
was prepared with great care showing the real
attributes of a good teacher. Questions like audibility of the
voice in the rear benches, how
good the presentation is, whether teacher comes in time, (punctuality), utilises the available lecture time effectively for discussing the subject, comes
well prepared for the class, how the teacher responds to questions raised
by students, whether he
encourages questions being asked,
whether the teacher
is fair in the evaluation of test
papers or assignments etc etc. Some
questions invited YES / NO
type of answers and some others required response likes Excellent/ Very Good/Good/ Satisfactory /
Poor etc. None
of the students were to write their names and if someone wanted to add a few remarks in addition to the
standard questions, they could do
so carefully without revealing their
identity.
We, the
new teachers were sceptical about this as we thought that these
response sheets will be
scrutinised by the
Head of the Department or other
senior teachers and we will be reprimanded for any inadequacies. To our surprise, the
HoD said no one
else other than the teacher concerned
is to see this questionnaire
filled by the students. We
were asked to carefully scrutinise every sheet and see where
we are faltering or where we are
doing well. The purpose of the
whole exercise was for self-correction by the conscious
teachers , not for reprimand
or including in the confidential report. What a glorious
way to start our teaching career. It was the brain child of our
Principal Sri.M K A Hameed who
was a strict disciplinarian and had returned from USA after his higher studies. While
going through the responses from
my students, I could find out a few of my inadequacies like poor
audibility to students in the
back benches, poor board work
etc. Consciously I tried to overcome these all throughout my career
and I am happy to state that I could improve gradually and become a reasonably good teacher
as years went by.
In retrospect , several years
after joining Regional
Engineering College Calicut,
there was a discussion in the College Council on introducing teacher
evaluation by students as suggested
by the All India
Council for Technical Education. One
of the senior teachers had prepared a
detailed questionnaire with
evaluation of each attribute
quantitatively on a scale of 5 so that a teacher evaluation index could be prepared as a
percentage score and used in the
confidential report of the teacher. Many members of the college council agreed
that it is absolutely necessary but
initially I was the
lone voice against it, quoting my
above TKM experience suggesting that any teacher evaluation should be
used only for self-correction and
not for building
confidential reports or for punitive purpose. A visiting professor from Queens
University Canada alone
supported my view. As
the white man supported me, a
few others followed
but we were still in a minority
and it was introduced in the college and many
teachers were looking at these with a bit of apprehension. The responses
from some of the careless students used to be too casual and hence unreliable. Popular teachers used
to get better teacher evaluation indices whereas as those who are
strict and disciplined in
the class got lower
indices.
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