Speaking of end-of-semester adventures, I've wondered in the past about the practice of giving class credit for filling out teacher evaluations. The Daily Universe ran an article a while back which mentioned that an associate academic vice president opposes the practice:
""If I had my personal say-so I wouldn't have them do it because I don't think it's related to course content," Williams said. "I would much rather that this all be done because students feel responsible and faculty feel responsible.""
My question is not why the university wants feedback from students who don't want to bother. It's free to request it if it thinks it valuable. My question is why the university allows the giving of academic credit for merely filling out the evaluations. It doesn't seem like it would be terribly difficult to set up the computer system so as to prevent giving a student a grade on any course for which he has not filled out an evaluation. Fill out the evaluation, and AIM spits out your grade. This would not only maintain the double-blind nature of the exercise, but would avoid the silliness of professors giving obscene amounts of extra credit in return for an activity with no bearing on the actual course material.
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