Gator Rater, UF’s online faculty evaluations, becomes available to students this month.
This semester, administrators would like students to remember that their opinions about professors matter.
Although participation increased 5.9 percent from Summer 2011 to Fall 2011, about 75 percent of UF students were not aware that student responses are used in professors’ tenure, promotion and salary decisions, according to a Gator Rater student survey.
“I’d like students to fully realize the value of their feedback to the educational process for current and future Gators,” UF Evaluations Coordinator Donna Johnson said. “Their input each semester helps ensure continual improvement of courses here at UF.”
Johnson, who taught at UF for several years, said even when she taught 400 students in a semester, she believed their feedback was vital to improving the course.
The online evaluation system also goes hand-in-hand with UF’s sustainability initiatives.
Gator Rater will save UF about $330,000 a year, equivalent to yearly tuition and fees for about 60 undergraduate students, according to information from the UF Office of Institutional Planning and Research.
Evaluations are already open for some classes at www.evaluations.ufl.edu, and others will open later this month. Results from last semester are also available. Evaluations close on the last day of the class.
