Best and Worst Aspects of Course–Your Opinions

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 “10 out of 10”.  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.

Best Aspects of the Course – by number of mentions above 5

• The diversity of the course, introducing you to all aspects of what the department does - 35
• The lectures – mostly for their variety and enthusiasm – 35
• Discussions – 25 (though 3 disliked them)
• Site Visits – 22
• The labs – generally (and see below for problems) – 15
• Course design overall - 8
• Connection of theory to reality - 6
• There were quite a variety of aspects with fewer than 5 mentions including specific lecturers, specific labs, aspects of the administration

Worst (or problematic) Aspects of the course

• Various aspects of the labs, though a maximum of 6 in each area
  • Lack of detailed rubrics, guidance on some labs
  • Lab instructions not clear
  • A variety of aspects with less than 5 mentions including: Discussions, lab instructions, dull lecturers, specific labs.

Some Statistics

• 48 people chose to write exclusively about the Best
• 2 chose to write exclusively about the Worst
• 31 chose to write about the best and worst
• Longest essay – 624 words
• Average essay – 276 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 6.1 out of 7 overall.  I will look at the course evaluations when you complete them to see how they match this rating.

Here’s a link to the overall Final Assessment Comments