Summary of Student Feedback with Reflection

Summary of Student Feedback
Jane Doe
Linguistics

At the end of each quarter, students fill out an Evaluation of Instruction Report. They are asked to rate aspects of both the course and the instructor using a Likert-type scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). The overall rating at the end of my first quarter teaching was 4.2; at the end of my second quarter, this rose slightly to 4.3

More informative evidence came from students’ written evaluations. In evaluating my first quarter of teaching, student comments were generally favorable, though they sensed my lack of experience as a teacher. This was not mentioned after my second quarter of teaching, as I felt more comfortable with both the course content and with leading a classroom. Some students were rather impressed that I learned everyone’s name quickly – not a frequent occurrence at a large state university. A notable aspect of my teaching was that I encouraged them to argue against some of the theories presented. One student described this as “encouraging them to express their own thoughts and feelings.” Other aspects of my teaching that they praise are that I am well-organized, I pay attention to students’ needs and spend extra time helping them when necessary, and I foster a relaxed learning environment in class.

Students' main suggestion for improvement was to incorporate more classroom activities. This corresponds to what I have been learning in professional development workshops: students can have a richer learning experience when they are engaged in the process. Incorporating activities such as demonstrations of experiments, videos, and small-group discussions would accomplish several goals. It would break up the long class time (typically 1 hour, 48 minutes), preventing students from losing attention, and it would provide opportunities for students to work with the material presented in class in a variety of ways.