Students should be able to evaluate courses and faculty in a confidential manner . Students should be free to express their opinions on the quality of courses and teaching efforts without any concern that their evaluations might affect their grades or subsequent interactions with faculty.
Confidentiality helps to protect the integrity of the evaluation process.
While the work group was in agreement that confidentiality was important, the work group was also informed that the Student InterCouncil had reports that in a few instances, despite policies of confidentiality, procedures had violated policies of confidentiality. Student evaluations conducted for the third and fourth year medical students appear to be collected in a confidential manner. Within each of the component schools of the U.T. Houston Health Science Center, student evaluations should be used to provide feedback so that courses and teaching efforts can be improved. All schools report that they presently use student evaluations for these purposes. Student evaluations should be used as one of the indicators of faculty teaching performance, but they should not be used as the only indicator of the quality of faculty teaching.