Phillip Rogaway - Teaching Evaluations

UCD student evaluations of teaching (2001–2024)

Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) should be public. But, at UCD, they are treated as though they were top-secret military documents. The secrecy conceals problematic teaching, minimizes students’ voice, and contributes to the devaluation of teaching at UCD—and the attendant fetishization of even quite mundane research.

While I can’t make everyone’s evaluations public, I can at least release my own. The two links below contain all SETs from UCD, while the two tables contain everything since 2001 (apart from a class I had to take over from another professor mid-term).

Student evals - Rogaway - by year (1994 – 2024)
Student evals - Rogaway - by subject (Algorithms – Theory of Computation)

Below, column webpage links to the course webpage (on the web, not an LMS). Column evals links to the set of surveys. It contains written comments as well as the numbers. Columns mean and medn are the mean and median instructor rating, scored out of 5; The prompt is: Please indicate the overall teaching effectiveness of the instructor. Column response gives the response rate, written as num-evals-returned / enrollment, then (parentage).

Table T1: UCD Student Evaluations of Teaching / Rogaway / 2014–2024

Year Term Course webpage evals mean medn response

2024 Spring ECS 127: Cryptography webpage evals 4.5 5 82/115 (71%)

2024 Spring ECS 189L: Topics in CS: Black Mirror webpage evals 4.8 5 24/38 (63%)

2023 Spring ECS 120: Theory of Computation webpage evals 4.2 5 139/168 (83%)

2023 Spring ECS 188-1: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 4.8 5 24/38 (63%)

2023 Spring ECS 188-2: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 4.5 5 15/28 (54%)

2022 Winter ECS 20: Discrete Math webpage evals 3.8 4 98/140 (70%)

2021 Fall ECS 20: Discrete Math webpage evals 3.4 4 164/209 (78%)

2019 Fall ECS 188-1: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 4.3 5 20/22 (91%)

2019 Fall ECS 188-2: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 4.3 4 21/26 (81%)

2019 Spring ECS 188-1: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 4.7 5 23/27 (85%)

2019 Spring ECS 188-2: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 4.5 5 17/26 (65%)

2019 Winter ECS 127: Cryptography webpage evals 4.3 5 70/97 (72%)

2017 Fall ECS 188-1: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 4.6 5 25/25 (100%)

2017 Fall ECS 188-2: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 4.7 5 25/26 (96%)

2017 Fall ECS 188-3: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 4.6 5 22/24 (92%)

2017 Winter ECS 188-1: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 4.8 5 22/22 (100%)

2017 Winter ECS 188-2: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 4.4 5 22/23 (96%)

2016 Spring ECS 127: Cryptography webpage evals 4.3 5 69/127 (54%)

2016 Winter ECS 188: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 4.7 5 9/19 (47%)

2015 Spring ECS 120: Theory of Computation webpage evals 4.1 4 87/127 (69%)

2015 Winter ECS 188-1: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 4.7 5 25/27 (93%)

2015 Winter ECS 188-2: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 3.9 4 9/28 (32%)

2014 Spring ECS 120: Theory of Computation webpage evals 4.3 5 69/126 (54%)

2014 Winter ECS 227: Modern Cryptography (Graduate) webpage evals 4.9 5 9/13 (69%)

The department’s original teaching evaluations, before going to a campus-wide form used above, graded everything out of 10, not 5. The prompt was simply: The instructor is a good teacher, overall. Results follow, going back to 2001.

Table T0: UCD Student Evaluations of Teaching / Rogaway / 2001–2013

Year Term Course webpage evals mean medn response

2013 Fall ECS 20: Discrete Math webpage evals 8.59 9 93/153 (60%)

2013 Winter ECS 188-1: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 8.83 9 23/24 (96%)

2013 Winter ECS 188-2: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 9.24 10 21/21 (100%)

2013 Spring ECS 120: Theory of Computation webpage evals 9.24 10 58/81 (72%)

2012 Fall ECS 120: Theory of Computation webpage evals 8.96 10 53/77 (69%)

2012 Winter ECS 227: Modern Cryptography (Graduate) webpage evals 9.50 9.5 6/11 (55%)

2012 Winter ECS 120: Theory of Computation webpage evals 9.27 10 41/60 (68%)

2011 Fall ECS 188: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 9.33 10 21/22 (95%)

2011 Spring ECS 189A: Cryptography webpage evals 9.14 10 21/25 (84%)

2010 Fall ECS 188: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 9.26 10 19/19 (100%)

2010 Spring ECS 227: Modern Cryptography (Graduate) webpage evals 9.88 10 21/25 (73%)

2010 Spring ECS 120: Theory of Computation webpage evals 9.00 9 35/50 (70%)

2009 Fall ECS 188: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 9.43 10 23/25 (92%)

2009 Spring ECS 188-1: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 9.36 10 22/23 (96%)

2009 Spring ECS 188-2: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 8.96 9 22/23 (96%)

2009 Winter ECS 227: Modern Cryptography (Graduate) webpage evals 9.50 10 6/8 (75%)

2008 Fall ECS 20: Discrete Math webpage evals 7.94 8 49/72 (68%)

2008 Spring ECS 188: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 9.56 10 9/11 (82%)

2007 Fall ECS 188-1: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 9.27 10 15/15 (100%)

2007 Fall ECS 188-2: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 9.13 9 15/20 (75%)

2007 Spring ECS 120: Theory of Computation webpage evals 9.00 10 15/27 (56%)

2007 Spring ECS 227: Modern Cryptography (Graduate) webpage evals 9.33 10 6/6 (100%)

2006 Winter ECS 220: Theory of Computation (Graduate) webpage evals 8.73 9 15/16 (94%)

2006 Winter ECS 120: Theory of Computation webpage evals 9.25 10 12/19 (63%)

2006 Spring ECS 188-1: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 7.85 8 12/19 (63%)

2006 Spring ECS 188-2: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 8.69 9 16/16 (100%)

2005 Spring ECS 120: Theory of Computation webpage evals 8.86 9 28/39 (72%)

2005 Spring ECS 227: Modern Cryptography (Graduate) webpage evals 9.11 10 9/12 (75%)

2004 Spring ECS 188: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 9.52 10 21/22 (95%) 2004 Spring ECS 120: Theory of Computation webpage evals 9.36 10 39/53 (74%)

2004 Winter ECS 188: Ethics in an Age of Technology webpage evals 9.25 10 12/13 (92%)

2003 Fall ECS 227: Modern Cryptography webpage evals 9.80 10 17/20 (85%)

2002 Winter ECS 120-1: Theory of Computation webpage evals 8.90 9 21/26 (81%)

2002 Winter ECS 120-1: Theory of Computation webpage evals 9.00 9 20/29 (69%)

2001 Fall ECS 227: Modern Cryptography (Graduate) webpage evals 9.59 10 17/17 (100%)

Further comments

I omit 1994-2000 in the table above because the data is spotty (e.g., staff didn’t record medians or course enrollments on the summaries). Also, I was still learning how to teach.

Apart from the UCD evaluations, there are also about 100 evaluations on RateMyProfessors.com (2003 – 2024).

Many faculty hate student evaluations of teaching. They complain that professors who give easy classes and high grades get a boost. They say that end-of-term evaluations fail to measure the ultimate educational value of the students’s experience, which they might not see at the end of a term. These things are true. But it also true that students have just spent tens of hours observing you teach, from which they likely know more about how you teach than your closest peers. Plus, beyond the numbers, reading a complete set of comments will usually paint a pretty clear picture about how a class went. Finally, we should keep in perspective the extensive and consequential ways that faculty assess students, and the perfunctory and inconsequential ways that we let them assess us.

Return to Rogaway’s homepage.