Feedback from GRDSCH 630 Students, Winter 2006

At the end of the quarter we asked students for their feedback on the course. Students provided numerical student ratings and also responded to open-ended feedback questions.

• Numerical Ratings
• Open-ended Feedback Questions
• Who takes tis class?
• Feedback from Other Quarters

Numerical Student Ratings

We asked students to rate, on a scale of zero (strongly disagree) to five (strongly agree), whether the course helped them, and we also asked them to rate the value of the course as a whole. Here are the students' ratings:

How to more effectively help students learn

How to respond to the diverse backgrounds, interests, and abilities of students

Relevant resources for improving teaching and learning

What to do next to continue developing as a teacher

Open-ended Feedback

We also asked students a series of open-ended feedback questions. Here are the questions we asked, followed by students' responses:

1. What parts of the class should we keep?
2. What parts of the class should we change?
3. Other comments

Question 1: What parts of the class should we keep?

Teaching portfolio and related assignments

• Definitely keep the final project! (though I don't think you'd plan to get rid of it anyway) It is a great help to be guided through the process with peer feedback etc.
• All of the main assignments- practical teaching project, portfolio, philisophy statement.
• The different stages of  working on and submitting parts of portfolios (I found this to be the most valuable and attractive parts of the class)  Practical teaching projects.
• Philosophy statements, teaching projects
• Keep the feedback on drafts, etc. Keep the grade/no grade emphasis, students can get out what they put in. this flexibility is excellent. Keep all the references to more resources, it's excellent to have the opportunity to explore more.
• The core assignments were very good -- I got a lot out of these and they resulted in good solid documents that I can build upon, refine and integrate into a portfolio.
• Teaching phil. And ways to evaluate. Different ways of running class for different days.

Class activities

• Small group feedback, portfolio work, briefs 2-3 minute presentation about practice teaching project
• I liked  the peer review process and collaborative modeling by the instructors. Preparing the philosophy statement and seeing examples of philisophies and also portfolios was very, very helpful.
• I found the discussion on teaching/how to approach teaching very useful as a starting point for my own research. I also found the teaching brief to be helpful -- examples were great!
• Keep ties between in class activites and writing portions of the teaching portfolio. The feedback and discussions with other students in small groups were very useful as I want to do my writing revisions.
• Teaching philosphy, but consider those who do not have any (or a few) experiences in teaching. In addition, I like the discussion and listen to other colleagues' opinions.

Other

• Everything- it was great. I think class might be valuable for people who have taught before.
• Everthing! I thought all the activities (PTP, TB, Portfolio) were very valuable and I got something from most in-class discussions as well. I especially liked the resources/inferences/toolkit building theme.
• Everything; I honestly can say that I learned something from everything we did iso I wouldn't want to see anything deleted.
• Most of it- it's pretty well tuned right now

 

Question 2: What parts of the class should we change?

Comments on projects, presentation of projects

• The approach taken with sharing he teaching briefs was a nice idea, I'd like to see more things shared with that method
• I liked the way we did the briefs, but I would have liked to meet with a few other people
• I felt the presentation and discussion of the practical teaching project went a bit long and drag out, but I don't have a good solution. I would have liked to see the full sample portfolios earlier so I had a better idea what and what not to put in philosophy statement.
• while I liked the practical teaching project, the last teaching brief, I didn't get much out of.
• Possibly more times to discuss some of the work. We were often broken up into groups of similar disciplines, I think it would be interesting and useful to do at least one with a group of different disciplines.

Comments on portfolio development

• The piece about bringing in documentary evaluations of our teaching
• More full-length portfolio examples early in the quarter
• Perhaps more complete examples of full portfolios (maybe even providing an example from each person's discipline if possible!)

Comments related to interests of students not currently teaching

• try to give more examples or alternatives for students who have little teaching experiences. Maybe more reading, discussion on balancing teaching and research.
• The project was less useful as someone who isnt currently teaching. Though I can see how it would benefit those who are.

No changes to recommend

• Sorry, nothing immediately  comes to mind -- it was a well designed course, I appreciated the feedback we got from the teachers (e.g. the one-on-one mtg.) Maybe more feedback like this perhaps in wrriten form on assignments.

Other comments

• More e-mails reminding us of upcoming class activites and assignments.
• larger room, place teaching statements given out in class (and portfolios) on line so students can make copies if they like -- as long as it's legal
• Maybe have a couple of people discuss or do a panel on their job application experiences… (or CIDR could do this more generally …)
• May talk more about how to apply "teaching strategies" (teaching brief) to the classroom rather than just share the information, I am expecting to do it more systemtically.

Question 3: Other comments about the class

Thanks for your enthusiasm and support. I look forward to working with CIDR as a result in the future!

I'm so glad I took this class. My original goal for the class was to start on my teaching portfolio -- which I did and achieved more on it than expected, but I found there was much more that I learned.

I am so glad that I partcipated in this class. Early in my graduate career. I have gained key insights into myself and teaching scholoship that I will be able to build on and be preapred for the job market when I graduate! 

The printout of relevant educational journals was great (and much appreciated!!)

Great course! I felt almost all of the tome I spent on this class was directed and useful.

Thanks for all of the examples!

I had a very enjoyable learning experience this quarter and feel I am off to a great start in my own career.

Giving all 5's above may not help you focus on where to improve, but having started with no techical/structured training as a teacher, this course did help me learn significantly in all areas under #1

Class activities and reading supported the assigments very well- when it come time to actually write up forward documents, I had lots of good ideas that were a combination of my own previous ideas as well as those presented in the reading materials and broughtup in class discussions.

I would liked to work more often with people in a related field. I liked the interdisciplary exposure, but for things like peer reviewing materials I would have liked assigned groups.

 

Departments Represented in the Course

Here is a list of departments represented in GRDSCH 630 during Winter 2006:

• Anthropology
• Astronomy
• Bioengineering
• Comparative Religion
• Earth and Space Sciences
• Education
• English
• Forest Resources
• Germanics
• Mathematics
• Molecular and Cellular Biology
• Nursing
• Oceanography
• Pharmacology
• Women Studies

206.543.6588 (phone)
206.685.1213 (fax)
email: cidr@u.washington.edu
web: http://depts.washington.edu/cidrweb/