Rather than leaving it at that, I thought I'd do a little digging and see what educational esearchers have to say about this subject. After a bit of web-searching, here's an overview:

Your evals will improve if you are (in no particular order):

1. enthusiastic - (click here )

2. male (esp. in a male-dominated subject like mathematics - here for a bibliography)

3. teaching a large course and are perceived as "liberal, neurotic and extroverted"

4. teaching a small discussion-oriented class and are perceived as "gregarious, adaptable and supportive" (these last two are pulled from a nice overview of the research on teaching evaluations called "Instructor Evaluations and the Politics of the Classroom" )

I was somewhat surprised to not find anything on age or race - then again, I didn't spend more than half an hour looking. (It might also be an indication of the number of minority professors out there.)

My conclusions: Don't despair. If you can use evaluations (formal or otherwise) as a formative tool - to help you understand the effects of your teaching - that's great. Just pray that they aren't being used as a normative tool - to measure your "effectiveness" as a teacher, evaluations fail miserably.

The idea that we can easily measure something as complex and multi-faceted as teaching effectiveness is a very dangerous one. Unfortunately, it's an idea shared by many college administrators and by our current President.

I used to (out of academics, making real money now) do my own informal evaluation about 4-6 weeks ahead of the official one. I'd ask just four questions:

1) What are things you like about the class?

2) What is one thing you'd like to see the instructor do to improve the class?

3) what is one thing you'd say to your fellow students that would improve the class?

4) what is one thing you could do to improve the class?

I would be honest and tell the students that there is naturally a chance I'd recognize handwriting, so anonymity can't be guaranteed.

Interestingly, I found that 2) often canceled itself out. For instance, there was usually a balance between students who thought the pace was too fast and those who thought it too slow. It was almost dead on 50-50 split. 3) allowed me to reinforce things I'd been doing in class discipline all along -- typically the complaint was about class noise/side conversations.

But I'd always find something to "improve" upon, even if I had to pick something superficial.