As the semester draws to a close, course evaluations give students the chance to turn the tables and grade their professors and teaching assistants.

Instructor and Course Evaluation System, or ICES, forms are filled out for about 13,000 course sections a year – about 300,000 individual sheets, said Chris Migotsky, head of measurement and evaluation at the Center for Teaching Excellence.

After the students finish bubbling in their rankings and filling out short answer questions, the forms are sent back to the center. Migotsky said many students do not know what happens after they fill out the forms – and some think no one reads them.

But the forms can have a significant impact on the promotion, payment, course assignments and tenure of faculty within their departments, Migotsky said, in addition to fulfilling their main purpose of helping instructors improve their teaching.

“I do think that the ICES forms hold quite a lot of power over the lives of junior faculty,” said mathematics professor Douglas West.

West said that he and older professors who have been teaching for longer are less affected by the results, and may depend more on experience to guide their instruction.

While the forms are not a perfect way of assessing instructor performance, the feedback can be helpful, said Chris Bouchard, graduate student and teaching assistant.

“If the ICES weren’t there, I would try to get feedback from the students informally in class,” Bouchard said. “But that would probably be ineffective because of the lack of anonymity.”

Migotsky explained the journey of an ICES form, from start to finish, and how the forms are used.