The Dhaka University Central Students’ Union (Ducsu) has launched a website titled ‘DU Evaluation’ to assess the teaching quality, professionalism and academic conduct of teachers with students at Dhaka University (DU).
Through the website, students will be able to evaluate teachers of their respective departments based on specific criteria.
The website was officially launched at a press conference at the Ducsu building on Thursday.
Ducsu Executive Member Umma Uswatun Rafia said introducing a teacher evaluation system was part of the promises made in Ducsu’s election manifesto.
She said Ducsu decided to launch the website on its own initiative as no effective progress was made despite prolonged communication with different levels of the university administration regarding the implementation of the system.
“I had been working on the need to introduce a teacher evaluation system since I contested the Ducsu election. Although we communicated with the university’s ICT office, the vice-chancellor, the pro-vice-chancellors and other administrative bodies, the implementation process faced prolonged delays,” Rafia said.
She added, “We had been engaged in a tug of war with the administration for a long time. Eventually, we felt that it had to be introduced in some way or another.”
Explaining the evaluation process, Rafia said a student attempting to access the website using their academic email address would receive a code in that email. After entering the code, the student would only be able to evaluate teachers from their own department.
Students would not have the option to evaluate teachers from other departments, she added.
Ducsu leaders said the website had been running on a trial basis for two days before its official launch. During that period, around 7,000 students evaluated their teachers.
The trial operation will continue for the next seven days, during which students’ criticisms and suggestions will be collected and necessary changes will be made to the website.
After the trial phase, Ducsu will prepare a report based on a three-month evaluation process and analysis of students’ feedback involving teachers from all departments of DU. The report will later be submitted to the university administration, the leaders said.
Speaking at the press conference, Ducsu Vice-President (VP) Md Abu Sadik Kayem said the aim of introducing the teacher evaluation system was not to create conflict between teachers and students.
Rather, Ducsu wants to establish an effective feedback mechanism through which the quality of teaching can be improved and students can express their opinions, he said.
He said students are regularly evaluated through examinations, class tests, midterms and semester finals, but there has so far been no effective institutional mechanism to collect students’ feedback on teaching quality and areas requiring improvement.
Sadik Kayem said Ducsu had discussed introducing the teacher evaluation system with the university administration since taking charge. However, as the matter had not been implemented administratively even after a year, Ducsu decided to launch the website on its own initiative.
“The university administration failed to introduce the system, so we have started the teacher evaluation process through Ducsu’s initiative,” he said.
