Douglas Anderson
Self-Evaluation 2007

Student Opinion Surveys Discussion

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student opinion survey summary

overview | teaching | service | career plan

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best and worst | discussion | student self-assessments

Note |  This section offers faculty an opportunity to respond constructively to opinions and perceptions expressed in the student opinion surveys, to share their self-assessment on important teaching effectiveness criteria, and to provide additional insight into their pedagogy and the learning environment in their classrooms.

The survey instrument

Note | January 15, 2008 - the Fall 2007 course evaluations are not available yet, so this page is incomplete.

The survey results from the ten sections I taught last year are given some order here by counting and then rank ordering those that got the three (including ties) highest and lowest scores.

For example, in 2006, #5 was among the best scores on all ten surveys and among the worst on none.

Discussion

The discussion of pedagogy in my portfolio explains the four methods I use in addition to official student opinion surveys. These four methods are supplemented throughout the course by private email between students and me. I give students a lot of feedback and try to engage each of them in an ongoing discussion of their learning. I encourage them to talk to each other about their learning. I emphasize formative feedback and Socratic questioning.

The multiple methods of feedback serve two purposes. First, they make the students more aware of their own and each other's learning process and learning style, learning how they learn. Second, I can infer things that I can do to improve the courses.

The pattern seen this year in my student opinion surveys has persisted. I most frequently score lowest on "4. The course was well-organized," although for MKT 425, this item got the second best score. From my other methods of evaluation, I think I understand why it so often scores low.

I don't use textbooks. Some students expect everything about a course to be between the covers of a textbook, perhaps supplemented by lecture notes. My course materials are on the course web and linked to it. I can take advantage of unexpected events in the real world.

I emphasize divergent learning, not convergent learning, so some students have trouble seeing the relevance of other students' learning to their own.

The constant feedback lets me make in-course adjustments. I keep the same major assignments and grading criteria, but I often adapt the day-to-day activities to fit the students in that particular section. Every course's syllabus page changes several times per week as the course develops.

Thus, where some students see weak organization, I see flexibility and opportunity. I'm quite content that this item is the one I score lowest on, remembering that the average for all ten courses was well under 2.0.

On the other end of the scale, I'm equally sanguine about the item I score best on: "5. The instructor generally provided for a full class period." Almost all my students strongly agree, and have done so for many years. I am almost always in the classroom before any students arrive, and excepting technical difficulties with the computers and projector, we always start at the appointed hour. There is always more to talk about than the time allotted. Teaching at night, I often hear, "You don't give us enough time between classes to get dinner," and "We're always the last cars in the parking lot; that's not fair."

Item "10. The instructor was willing to meet for consultation outside the class period" gets the next best (lowest) scores. That contributes to the relatively poor scores for "6. I found it helpful to attend class regularly". Students can too easily catch up in my office or via email when they miss class. I give a lot of mini-lessons to students who missed. The availability of course materials online contributes there, too.

In sum, students rate me most highly for the amount of time I spend with them, in class and out. They also get a lot of personal attention via email, which our official surveys don't ask for specifically.

end of course self-assessments

Of all the methods of course assessment, I learn the most from the end of course self-assessments. Over the years, as a result of them, I have kept the courses focused on learning by doing rather than on lectures and tests. The end-of-course assessments of MBA 600 and MBA 604 justified the creation of MBA 504 back in 2000. They shaped the development of MBA 600, for another example, by identifying the need for more attention to business plans as well as the industry to focus on. The latter changed several times until I found an industry -- pop culture marketing, especially music -- that worked best.

The other gratifying use of the self-assessments is the affirmation that I'm affecting students' lives. When I stop hearing this, I'll worry. Here's a selection from the past year, with my emphases in boldface.

excerpts from student self-assessments

GEN 230 Creative Expression

Basically right when this course started I really contemplated dropping it right away. It did not start like the class that I was expecting but rather a creative class. I am one of the least creative people around but I still found some way to get something out of this class. I ended up working pretty hard on my final project because it was something that I was interested in. I have never made a video before and it was something that was cool to learn. I never knew that there was even a windows movie maker. After this class I also learned to keep going with something. It is easy to let something get to you and just completely stop trying but you have to overcome that. In this class we did by making these videos. I would never have thought I can make what I did in the beginning of the year but I ended up making it anyway. Overall it was a pretty good class that I did take something out of. I learned to keep going with something and learned some new things that I did not know before this class.

I learned a lot this year in this class and enjoyed it a lot because of all the hands on activities we did. The first I learned was how to use windows movie maker. I never knew how to use it and didn't know it was going to be that easy and how much fun it could be. Movie maker can help with creating picture sideshows and videos I can send my family of my playing soccer because they don't see me play that much. Also, how I can put pictures to people's favorite music as gifts for Christmas. Another thing I learned was how to rip clips and music and re arrange them into better form to make a great video. Creating a web site was another thing I enjoyed doing. I can now create a web page for my team and put stats for the players and a schedule so they don't have to call me every week to find out when we play. Overall I had a great time learning about the process and how everything works. The class also taught me how to explore my computer and play around with things to learn how to use them.

I have learned so much this semester. I have learned how to video tape, edit, produce, and direct movies and video's. I have also, learned how to write and design websites. I have also learned how to manage my time more efficiently and I have learned how to use a very complicated, professional program called Final Cut Pro. With this knowledge, I may just explore new and exciting endeavors with it...thank you Doug for believing in me and I am off and running, to Master the possibilities.

This course was a much more interesting course than I ever thought it would be and I really enjoyed it. We learned so many different things about so many different computer software programs. The software I enjoyed using the most was Windows movie maker. I though it was so fun making different movies and adding music and audio through the Audacity program. I got more creative than I usually do. Also the things I learned in this class helped with others. One example is when I had to crop a picture to make my website for my Business Analytical Writing class I just went and used the GIMP program and cropped it out to make it fit. I realized all of this can be used for many things and I am really happy I took this course.

I just want to thank you so much for helping me out all this year and when ever I needed it. You always helped me even in the business writing class as well. I never had a teacher offer their services to me as much as you and I just want to say thank you from my heart.

Your class was probably my favorite for this semester and since I have been here. I enjoyed the creative process as opposed to the learning, reading, and writing process. The class gives you more of an ability to be creative and think outside the box rather then the other classes, where you are taught a certain criteria and you are told what to do and how to do it. But with your class it was whatever you wanted, however you wanted. The class allowed me to open up my "mental shell" so to say. I write poetry and short stories but never really showed anyone else besides professors or teachers. I never had a fear of showing my friends or anyone else, I just didn't think they were ready to read it and take it for what it actually was. Even though I didn't do any poetry in the class, my video's were almost like poetry. I expressed what I felt through pictures to a song that meant a lot to me, and I think I did it effectively. I didn't necessarily learn a lot, even though I did; you gave me the basics and I just ran with it.

I don't think I've ever spent so much time on homework/projects for one class then I have on yours. It isn't a bad thing, but I just thought about it the other day how much time I actually spent on everything from the beginning of the year until now.

When you assigned us our final project I never thought I could do something like I did. I'm pretty computer software illiterate. Using software such as audacity to work with sounds amazed me. I never understood how commercials could be made, as well as movies and clips. Using the Windows Movie Maker was a ton of fun. Once I got going on my project, I didn't want to stop. I learned how to use these tools by coming to class and having you explain how to use them. Going step by step through each phase helped along with learning a few odds and ends on my own. I really liked this course!

I didn't know what to expect once I entered this class, but now I am very glad that I ended up in it. On the very first day, I was a little bit worried that my lack of computer skills would hold me back from doing well, but when I look at my final project, I realize that I was wrong. I guess I can say that the most important thing that I learned is that I should keep an open mind to different things on the computer because there is probably a lot more that I don't know about. This is the most fun I have had in a college class by far and found myself not even considering the work as actual homework. I am very glad that I took it.

At the beginning of the process I didn't really believe that I would end up with a movie that I enjoyed putting together. It took me a while to really start to understand what I was actually doing. When I started to get the hang of the process I think that I started thinking "out of the box". I don't really consider myself a very creative person so I think I surprised myself by being able to do this and enjoy it. Now since I know kind of what I am doing I definitely would have changed some of the things during the project. By having done this process and learning how to use these different programs I want to do this again.

This class has taught me patience and perseverance. Before I started this class, I had those two qualities, but not to the level of which they are now. As I stated before, I'm not the most computer savvy person in the world. I, along with some people in the class, didn't even know Movie Maker was apart of the Office package. In fact, I didn't even know it existed. So when I started the project I had my doubts. As I expected, there were many obstacles to overcome when making the movie. Recording the proper videos, converting the right files, and precisely placing clips all became a challenge, as was the case with most people. But the hardest time hit when I couldn't save the movie to my home pc, or even the school computer, needing to convert it to a media file instead of the .mswmm information file. When this initially happened, I felt I was in trouble. But I was determined to not let this get in the way of my project. I tried many solutions to solve the problem, and when one didn't work, I searched for another. I converted files using media-convert.com, bought a camcorder, a mini dvd camera, an ieee 1394 (aka firewire) pc card, a firewire cable, and a 512 MB stick of RAM to boot.

Looking back, I was impressed that I better learned how to persevere and not give in. To look for another solution when one didn't happen, and to not give up, is what life's all about. I know little about computers, and to keep churning through solution upon solution was a very valuable thing to learn. I became determined to throw in the towel. So when you asked the class what was the biggest thing we learned, for me, it was to persevere, and always look for another way to accomplish my goal. It sounds maybe a little weird, but constantly searching for a way to make my movie play (and I did make it appear on movie maker at school. However there wasn't enough memory for the pc to play it), is a vital trait in life to learn and hang on to. There are many times in life that things go wrong even though you think you tried everything. But there is always that little light that hasn't been discovered yet. If you find it within yourself to keep trying, and to be so determined to not let anything get in your way, then you can't lose. You don't know how to fail, only succeed.

I just wanted to share with you a few things about what I have learned and overcame in this class. In the beginning I could not imagine myself making a small documentary. It actually made me stressed thinking about how I could be able to do this by myself. I originally asked one of my friends who is a visual and digital arts majors to help, but our meeting times never matched and I think it was a sign that I could do this by myself to begin with, and I did. The program audacity seemed foreign at first, but getting to know it and playing around with it I finally overcame my fear of working with it. ... I do plan on fixing my project a little more so that I can send it to my teacher at my High School I went to so she can give the girls a good outlook on that topic instead of taking tons of notes from a powerpoint that means nothing. I truly enjoyed doing this project and feel more confident in myself that I overcame this fear.

Overall I think I learned a lot in this class. When I first signed up for this class I thought it was just another writing class and that I would be writing a bunch of papers. I'm glad it wasn't a class like that because I've done that my whole life. This class taught me a lot more than that type of class could have and I think I'm more prepared for a real job because of this class.

ENG 260 Business and Professional Writing

Eng 260 was one of the best classes I've ever taken at Medaille or any school for that matter. I learned things that I had never even heard of before. ... I'm excited about what I learned to do with Front Page, Movie Maker, etc. I know that if I'm ever asked to do these things in the future not only will I be able to do them, but I can teach someone else how to do them.

My website was pretty bland, mostly because it was the first time I had ever made one. With my knowledge now, if I went back to make it better I would take the time I spent learning how to do these things and use it to learn how to make my website better overall.

I found your teaching methods to be very effective, and entertaining. You kept me interested in the work for the entire semester, something no other teacher has ever accomplished in my school career.

I was happy that you made it a mandatory thing for everyone to be in attendance for the presentations. I learned a lot from just looking at other people's pages. It also made me feel better when I heard that students had the same problems that I did. ...

Thank you for a great semester, I truly mean everything I've said above, it's not just talk. As I get older and closer to graduation I've really taken notice to the way some of my teachers actually teach. You have a gift that a lot of "teachers" don't have. Good luck with everything, hopefully we will run into each other down the road.

Being a Business major with a concentration in marketing, I learned a lot of valuable information that will take me to the next level in my future. I currently intern for hiphopdx.com and one of the things that they asked me upon receiving my intern was am I able to maintain a website? Me being me, I just said yeah just because if that is what they wanted from me, I would have learned how to do it some way some how. But, just my luck, that is what I learned from Doug in Eng 260. I had knowledge of websites and I could maintain one from a free website builder but never from scratch. But now I can. Not only did I learn how to make and maintain a website, I learned how to dress-up presentations and reports for easier reading and better presentation. I actually did one for my internship. I learned a lot from Eng 260 that will better me and my future. I have to say that it was one of my favorites classes; just off the strength that it was preparing me for tomorrow.

How did I learn it - I learned it from other students, Doug, and applying the things that I learned from class. With a hint of my own little style. It was hard for me to learn with all the other students during class time because I know that Doug had a lesson to teach and he could not tend to me only. So, I spent a lot of time with Doug one on one and other students outside of the classroom. What I mean by when I say I learned from other students is, when they were in class presenting and asking questions, I took heed and listened to what Doug and other students had to say to resolve or answer the question. I took that and applied my own little style to get what I wanted.

Overall, the class was bomb and I am glad I took it. I knew Eng 260 was not really Eng 260 but I did not know it was gonna be like that.

I learned a lot of things in Eng 260 this semester. Going into the semester I was not quite sure what to expect from the course. Now almost three months later I do not even know where to begin to explain what I learned this semester. I have learned some important skills that I will have for the rest of my life.

I also think I learned good time management. I believed I learned this just for the fact that with all the work you had in the class that if you did not complete it on time you would not be able to complete the web site. I also knew going to class every day would also help me learn important information. There is so many things I learned this semester.

I learned alot of this by going to class every day and paying attention. If I did not know how to do something I could either ask Doug or ask one of my peers for help. I think these two factors were really a big help to me. It's amazing how much you can learn from a peer. I know in a class when there is a lot of people it is almost impossible for the teacher to try to get to everyone to help them with their problems. If you do not know and a peer does that is just as good as Doug helping you. Also if they did not know, you always met outside of the class period whenever I needed. I did this a few times and it was a big help. I think that all these steps helped me complete what I learned in the class for the semester. I really enjoyed this class and having you as my teacher, Doug. I know that I will always have the skills I learned in this class with me for the rest of my life.

This class has really taught me a whole lot. I have never taken any type of computer class or learned about any of the programs besides what I learned in high school (which was Word, Excel, and PowerPoint). I think the most beneficial thing that I learned in this class was designing the website. I've never even heard of Microsoft FrontPage before taking this class. Well, I opened it and it opened my world to the technology of today's ever-changing world. Learning FrontPage through the help of my professor, the students around me, and just experimenting with it really made me understand how to design a webpage. Knowing programs like FrontPage and having the skill set to be able to make a decent website with working hyperlinks is something that I never thought I would know how to do, but now that I do, you can bet I'm going to use them to my advantage. I'm glad that I was able to learn such a skill that will help me not only pass a class, but have an advantage on others who might not know this stuff.

Although I learned about FrontPage and I enjoyed making a website, my favorite project of the course would definitely be the movie. Once again I had never even dreamed I would be able to go on any computer and be able to put a movie together in a matter of hours. Learning Movie Maker is another skill in which nobody will be able to take away from me. I had so much fun making the movie for class that I decided to make a movie for my mom for Christmas. Both my brothers will be out of the house come next Christmas, so this Christmas is the last one we'll all be living together, so I made her a movie with home videos and pictures of us kids growing up to today. She'll love it. I owe it all to having someone who simply introduced the technology to me. The website that I created is the most beneficial and will clearly help me in the future, but the movie was the most fun and I might be lucky to be able to use it in my career in the future.

I have learned a great deal from taking this course. Learning to build a web page was new to me but i picked up on it real quick. The excel work and video developing will help me in my career. This course has thought me a lot because most if not everything you taught us will help us out in the future. thank you for showing us things so we could understand it and not going through things too quickly. This class was also a lot of fun and i wasn't bored at all. Thank you again.

I will take what I learned with me in the future. I would like to get into marketing and almost everything we covered in class was something that could help me apply better for presentations and advertising.

MovieMaking- I found this the most fun of the class. I enjoyed making mini movies and can see the value of this as an advertising tool at my work.

Web- I found this to be an extremely important skill to have in today's technopoly of a society that we live in. Having this skill as a way of communicating is a great value to my career.

I would have to say that I have learned a great number of things after taking your course. The thing that I would have to say that I learned the most about while attending class was about the application Microsoft FrontPage. Before taking your class I actually didn't even know of the program's existence, let alone even have an idea about how webpages are constructed. But after trying to develop my website I learned alot about the many features that such an application offers an individual in helping to design a webpage. I also think that your discussions in class also served to help me understand what makes a webpage appealing to its viewers. Such things as a good color scheme, proper navigation bar, a good template, the right pictures (with links), videos, and good spacing between text. I definitely learned especially after trying to take my text from my word report and putting in my webpage that Microsoft Word is NOT the center of the universe when it comes to software as I had sort of assumed earlier.

Before taking your class I also didn't even know anything about open office software and how to obtain it but after taking your class the one day I realized that there is this whole other world of free effective software that offers me an alternative to that of the empire of Microsoft. Overall after looking back on the semester I found the class to be enjoyable seeing as how it was not at all what I expected when I first attended at the begriming of the semester. When first registering for the class I had kind of assumed that it would be another class similar to my analytical writing one. You know, another class where all I would get to do is simply write some sort of boring report. Instead it ended up taking me out of my boring familiar comfort zone and taught me a great deal about the importance of making information look presentable & easily accessible.

In English 260 I was given the chance to learn a number of things in relation to Business Writing. I learned how to take an ordinary boring business report and turn it into a interactive report that is easier to read and understand as opposed to the boring black and white version that is typical in the business field.

I also learned how to create a presentation that will interest not only the audience but the presenter as well. It is important for the audience to be in tune with the presentation and ENG 260 helped to develop and sharpen those skills that it takes to make a worthwhile presentation.

Finally I would say the greatest thing I learned this semester in ENG 260 is how important it is to be a problem solver. When working in the 'real' world not everything is going to go as planned. It is important for people to understand that problems are not an end, they are a means to an end. There are so many resources in the world from fellow people to the internet and where there is a problem there is a solution. It is important to tackle problems and learn from them, otherwise success will never come.

ENG 260 was without question a more enjoyable class than what I had thought it would be originally.

Learning in ENG 260 took place in two simple forms; asking questions and doing research. It was easy for Doug to just give instruction on how to do an assignment but there were always pieces missing and I think that is what made the class.

Asking questions is such a huge part of learning. No one has to know it all and no one should. The resources in the world today are at an all time high and growing. When I needed to know something I asked. I was not afraid to ask Doug or a fellow student how to complete a task or what approach to take. Not only was I able to sometimes find the answer to my question but I was at the same time getting a different perspective on my work, which was always rewarding.

Another key way to learn in the world today is to answer the problem or question yourself. Look it up online and do research. The answers are at our finger tips you just have to explore for them. I would use the internet to my advantage when working on an assignment knowing that sometimes I will never learn unless I just do it myself. Though sometimes it is good to rely on other people, sometimes it is just better to do it yourself so that you can take one more step in your self education.

This class was probably the most beneficial for me. I will take almost everything I learned in this class and apply it into my career.

Through this ENG 260 class, I have learned how to make decisions on what makes professional documents look good. I learned all of this by not only paying attention in class, but through hands on experience. To me, hands on experience is the best way to learn, because in a way, you sort of get to teach yourself, and who knows better than you how to teach yourself?

Everything I learned from this class was due to the fact that it was all hands on. Whenever we were taught something new we were able to try it on our own immediately. This was very effective for me in that it made it easier to recall how to do certain things which I otherwise would have forgotten how to do if I had not experienced doing it myself. This was a very productive project, and I would recommend this class to anyone.

Eng 260 was very interesting because I expected the class to be very different. I am glad that i took the class and feel that I have learned a great deal of new tools that will help me in other classes. Most of what I learned took me a while to understand but I felt that through meeting with you and going over questions that it has helped me tremendously. Overall I really enjoyed this course and I learned alot of useful tools.

A hands on experience was the key to learning how to do it. Some teachers just teach what should happen instead of letting the student do it themselves. I learn through experience so having the computer there while you were teaching it helped quite a bit.

Overall, I feel we learned a lot this year in ENG 260. For myself, it was a great opportunity to use and brush up on what you taught me last semester in my night class. I feel that learning all of those tools will come in handy in the future, and that you are right about there being a big use for it in the near-future. To be able to build a website and not rely on others is a big thing, and not something everyone can do. Being able to brush up on Movie Maker, Power Point, and Front Page will just allow me to get better at using those programs and finding my way around them for whenever I will need them again. These are all good tools for us to have, and we were able to learn better first hand instead of through paper-bound textbooks and dry lectures. You allowed us to make mistakes and learn from them, trial and error.

modified: November 2008
by Douglas Anderson
http://toLearn.net/portfolio/selfeval/2007/surveydisc.htm