My CSI squad just finished putting on a two week, 80 hour training course on basic crime scene investigation. We had seven officers from my agency, and five more from three other agencies, and the class culiminated in two graded mock crime scenes and a written test.
At the start of the second week, I passed out course evaluation forms and encouraged the students to get an early start and fill them out while memories were still fresh. This class had a huge number of moving parts, and I wanted to know if they thought anything was messed up or poorly done. Also, the curriculum is about 90% set in stone year to year, but I like to leave a little flexibility to accomodate emerging trends or specifically relevant topics. As an example for that last idea, my jurisdiction only has one very minor river, but if we were to draw several students from a neighboring county that has a major lake and gets a dozen water fatalities a year, I'd make sure to build in an extra block on drowning investigations.
This class is also a nice break from the basic academy atmosphere. The atmosphere is casual, classroom banter is encouraged, and the average student is an experienced cop with 5-10 years on, so I would hope they would be free with feedback.
What did we get on the evals?
F*&^ing near nothing. A bunch of "good class" and "fine" and "nothing to add".
Folks, if you're going to donate two weeks of your life to a school, take at least two more minutes and write something coherent. This class may very well be totally and utterly f'ed up from an end-user standpoint, but how in the hell am I ever going to find out if nobody tells me?