Staff Editorial: Go the extra mile & pick up your pencil

It's that time of year again.

In the midst of wracking your brain for answers and the meaning of life for final papers and exams, instructors leave the room for 20 minutes and expect you to write a few more sentences about the class you probably didn't even want to be awake for.

While it might not be the easiest thing to do at 8:30 a.m. (or 1:00 p.m. for the luckier among us), filling out course review sheets is an important part of being a member of the St. Joe's academic community. In order to facilitate improvements to courses, students should respond with honest and constructive criticism.

We should each do our best to accurately represent the best and worst features of the course and its instructor so the curriculum can be reevaluated for future students. After all, you had to sit through a twice-weekly discussion on cell division. Why not tell someone what you thought about it?

The all-important catch, however, is that professors and academic departments need to make a promise to students that they will seriously take into consideration the feedback presented by students through these review sheets.

Currently, there seem to be a limited number of professors on campus who revise courses based on the critiques offered by earnest students. If faculty members want students to participate more in their educations, they need to communicate that they've received and considered student opinion on important issues like textbook costs, course topics, and efficacy of assignments and assessment methods.

Without commitment on the part of both parties to developing conversations about effective and ineffective curriculum, review sheets will just become a waste of paper.

So this year, instead of writing another, "Zzzz," give rational critique a try. You might just save a freshman from purchasing a course packet-turned-placemat in the future.

The Hawk Staff