When the new technology kills the romance
Teaching evaluations that students give to their professors are one of the most important things for any university. Recently, here at EBS, we have switched from paper based evaluations of professors to electronic ones. This modernisation makes things more efficient. Usually that is a great thing. In this case however, I hate it. The new teaching evaluations are completely impersonal.
As an ode to the old school of evaluating teachers using pen and paper I have collected some of the messages that I have received over the last three years. I’d like to express my gratitude to all of you that wrote these evaluations but also to the rest of you that I had a chance to work with. You have honoured me in a way the new bits and bytes in some teaching evaluation database will have difficulties to do, unless they allow the use of emojies and stuff. Though, I have to admit that this is not only about me, but also about you and that I feel I have only been in the right place at the right time. It’s been my good fortune to work with highly creative, challenging, fascinating and sometimes demanding individuals…
Thank you!
Рашо, па ти си изгледа “права фаца”. Свака част! 🙂
Хвала!
No. The romance is still there, but the courtship has been changed.
Well, I am not sure. Call me the old fashioned one, but in this case I really get different emotions when I read hand written comments compared to the comments in bits and bytes.
The reason is simply: you are not completely updated! Check with your kid for five or six years… :)))
It is the same story as for the books: if you could not turn the page and feel the smell and the structure of the paper you could not be fully imbued in the plot or emotion? False! For two decades the generation will be born which will be unaware of the fact that the paper page ever existed.
You are right about that. It is just that I am not sure that I will be able to adjust in a way that these new approaches would bring the same emotional reaction that I get using the old school methods.
I beg to differ. The statement above about a new generation who will not be aware about an existence of paper pages in a book essentially means the following: In two decades a new generation will be born without hands. Not likely, albeit possible…
It just means that books will be in libraries and museums and that people will use tablets…
Within one generation, might be so. But the following one will know better, and get back to what matters. As a specie we have some million years of evolution where a key to our success was using hands, in the first place. That is how we learn. We understand and remember what we read on paper better than what we read on screens. To long and push development towards tablets… contradicts your vocation 😛 There is an article, popular, but worth reading in the November issue of Scientific American Why the Brain Prefers Paper, check it out.