Past Course Evaluations
A sample course evaluation can be accessed from here, separated by school:
Guilford Technical Community College:
North Carolina State University:
Quantitative Research Methods (section 2, same semester as above)
Quantitative Research Methods in Communication is an upper level undergraduate course. For many students, it is new material and requires a different way of thinking about research. During this first semester teaching the course, I found that unless there was a method of holding students accountable for reading and working on their projects, many would shut down. During the Spring of 2015 I will be teaching this course again. Based on the products coming out of the course and the evaluations above, I will continue a few components and change some. For example, I will continue to allow in class time to work on projects, practice running statistical tests, and several in-class activities with the various methodologies. I will ensure that there is enough flexibility to allow for more time on the in class activities and adapt the final project to be complete while adjusting the time table for topic selection until after some discussion of methods has taken place. I am looking forward to another semester with this material!
Below is a Wordle created from a few course evaluations. You can see some of the most common words used in these evaluations.
While many are positives that I will try to maintain throughout my courses: like “understanding” and “challenging;”
there are others I’d like to see as more prominent: like “applied” and “creative” or “critical.” After working with the Campus Writing and Speaking Program, I plan to think more about how to incorporate these in the classroom to make them more prominent.
Of course, there are those I’d like to see less of: like “waste.” Looking back, “waste” had to do with a journaling assignment from my first two semesters at GTCC. In order to rectify this, I’ve worked on making a stronger case for the importance of journals in the courses in which I use them and attempt to leave them a bit more open for students to use in a way that works for them. The last semester in which I used journals, I did not see “waste” on the evaluations!