Course evaluations

I've gotten some work done and I think I'll survive my meeting tomorrow. We'll see.

For now, I'm concerned about course evaluations. I do take them seriously and value student feedback, but I also try to keep it in perspective and not get myself worked up and paranoid over one disgruntled student. And isn't there always one? Last semester my class was totally online--never met my students in person although I did make myself available for face-to-face conferences. I am concerned about a few responses.

1. Assignments were too detailed and because of that were confusing. (this was an isolated comment but it stood out to me)
I was surprised at this--I would have expected the opposite to be true. In most of my classes I give assignment prompts that are at least a page long with bulleted lists of the essential elements. I do like my students to have some freedom to be creative, but I have generally found that too much freedom causes them to feel anxious (but that's not always bad). This was a Technical Writing class so the assignments did have precise requirements and were spelled out in great detail, more than I would usually give for a comp or lit class. So what do you think? Is there such a thing as too much detail for a tech writing assignment? How about for a more traditional academic essay? By graduate level, of course, most prompts consist of "Write a term paper. Period." Do lower level undergrads need more instructions while upper level need less? Should an online class have more detailed prompts to make up for the lack of classroom discussion of the assignment?

2. Too many assignments for an online class. (Not so isolated--maybe four people said this)
I think this just represents a problem with student attitudes toward online classes. They see it as a way to save time because they are too busy to sit in a classroom. And then when it requires as much work as a regular class, they are unhappily surprised. So this could just be chalked up to whining and ignored. But I think it might be something that has to be addressed in some way very early in the semester so students snap out of the mindset that they can breeze through the class simply because it is online.

3. Instructor seemed "annoyed or unwilling to offer advice."
Ouch. I am always frustrated when I score below perfect on the accessibility questions. I constantly remind and invite students to ask questions, email me, meet with me, etc. I don't know what to do when a student won't take advantage of it and then scores me low on evaluations. But there is another problem here. I seemed annoyed. Honestly, sometimes I was annoyed. My annoyance came when students did not ask questions or contact me when asked to but also when they did not read instructions and asked me questions that were clearly answered in the assignment prompts, or even worse, in bold letters on the announcements. My response to that was often "Read the instructions carefully and then ask me again if you have any more questions." That probably sounded like I was annoyed. I was. But what is the appropriate response? Electronic communication is, of course, notorious for miscommunications based on tone. No facial expression or tone of voice to help out. But there is also the problem that students (well, people in general) do not want to read instructions for themselves (especially, the long detailed ones in this class). This student's comment bothers me because it is really important to me to be available to my students and for them to feel comfortable approaching me. How do I communicate to them the importance of THEIR responsibility to read the course material carefully without sounding like I am annoyed if they ask me questions?

Incidentally, I did get positive comments on the same question. My favorite: “There was not a reasonable time when I could not reach her, unless it was late at night when normal people sleep.”

So there are a lot of questions, some rhetorical but others to which I would like some real answers. Any thoughts on these issues or course evaluations in general?