This is a screencap of the webpage for the Evaluation of Instruction Program’s (EIP) course evaluations. Toward the end of each quarter, students at UCLA receive emails to complete and submit these forms, but instructors give the impression that few students actually fill them out. They always stress the importance of this feedback mechanism to improve the quality of instruction and to better serve their students.
This source is related to the discussion in “Local-Global: Reconciling Mismatched Ontologies in Development Information Systems” by Jessica Seddon Wallack and Ramesh Srivasan. It illustrates how the school collects data on the academic activities of community members, in this case faculty and students, in order to make better decisions about policy. However, this evaluation form also illustrates the phenomenon of mismatched ontologies between students and administration. Whereas common academic problems for students may involve thoughts like “I don’t really get what this assignment is asking me to do and how I’m supposed to do it,” “My reading comprehension and note-taking skills need work,” “I don’t know how I should be preparing for the exam,” or “It takes a really long time to do all of the reading and writing assignments,” this form was not designed to address such issues despite its role in improving the quality of education. As far as I know, there is currently no mechanism directed at collecting data on improving academic services, and unsurprisingly there is no Academic Skills Center that provides formal training in effective learning skills. This evaluation form demonstrates how the administration’s meta ontology influences how it attempts to address community problems, but has difficulty taking local knowledge into account and therefore incurs an information loss.
Wallack and Srivasan make several recommendations for how meta ontologies can incorporate local knowledge. The first is to develop collaborative and inclusive ontologies. This online form does not provide for student input on what questions are asked and which ones are the most important, though the technological capability does exist. The second recommendation is to allow the community to provide feedback on the data that the administration has collected, and to help them make good critiques of that data through education and appropriate communication strategies. Currently, the contents of these evaluations are confidential, and students remain unaware of how other students felt about the course (outside of the usual gossip), or more importantly how the administration understands the data. Finally, the third recommendation is to provide for alternative means of communication and decentralizing decision-making to more local levels. The final comments section on the form allows for some flexibility regarding the former, though the response may not be relevant to the question, while the latter issue is beyond the scope of this form entirely.