I’ve just completed grading the essay question that each of you completed on the exam. I’m happy to say that all of you took it seriously and thus almost everyone received a “5 out of 5”. Only a few people had entries that were too short or not read for grammar, thus losing portions of a point. One or two, sadly, did not complete the question at all and thus received no points.
Since I use this question as a prime way of learning what’s good about the course and what needs improvement I keep a tally while grading of “Best” things and Worst things. Here’s a summary of what I learned.
Choice of Best or Worst to Discuss
- 46 people chose to write exclusively about the Best
- No one chose to write exclusively about the Worst
- 48 chose to write about the best and worst
Best Aspects of the Course – by number of mentions
- The lectures – mostly for their variety and enthusiasm – 46
- Site Visits – 31
- Course helped solidify the student’s understanding or choice of major – 28
- Discussions – 22
- Variety of topics in the course – 21
- Well structured/balanced class –17
- Helpful TAs – 11
- There were quite a variety of aspects with fewer than 10 mentions including specific lecturers, specific labs, aspects of the administration
Worst (or problematic) Aspects of the course
- Delayed feedback/grading of the labs – 19
- This was a big change from prior years due to the lack of grading help. I apologize to all once again.
- A variety of aspects with less than 10 mentions including: Discussions, lab instructions, dull lecturers, specific labs.
Some Statistics
- Average length of your essays – 254 words
- Longest essay – 455 words
To get a sense of your overall satisfaction with the course I rated each essay on a 1-to-7 scale with one being “intense dislike” and seven being “best course of the term” – a four being neutral. Using that scale your rating was 5.9 out of 7 overall. I will look at the course evaluations when you complete them to see how they match this rating.
No comments:
Post a Comment