New End-of-Semester Course Evaluations

Colleagues,

Tis the season to be thankful!  And that means end-of-semester course evaluations, which will launch on Tuesday, Nov. 27th** and close on Dec. 7th (just before the first finals).   This is a reminder that you can add your own questions (along with some suggestions), along with a reminder that there will be an entirely new survey starting now.

This semester marks the full deployment of the new evaluation (see attached), with questions grouped by category:

  • course content
  • course delivery
  • resources, assignments and assessment
  • course environment
  • comparison to other courses (old questions 8 and 13)
  • recitations/discussion (if section scheduled)
  • laboratories (if lab scheduled)
  • option to nominate a TA for a teaching award

Feel free to request lab and/or discussion evaluation sections for lecture only courses if relevant. 

You can also request up to four, open-ended questions of your own (as before).  What information might be useful the next time you teach the course?  Did you try something new this semester?  Do want to know what students found most difficult?  Some possible questions are included below. 

Sample “text” format course evaluation questions:

  1. Was there a pre-requisite topic for which students would have found a review video useful?
  2. What is the one thing students would recommend changing in the course?
  3. What topic did you find most confusing in this course?
  4. How effective was [iClickers, group discussions, homework, project] in supporting your learning?
  5. Significant background material for many of the topics in this class is assumed.  Given your background, was there a specific topic where starting at a lower level would have been really helpful?
  6. The textbook for this course is expensive.   Do you think it should continue to be a required text?  Why or why not?
  7. This is the first year that iClickers were used in this course.  Was the time and structure of the iClicker questions effective in helping you understand this material?
  8. This course is suffering from syllabus overload.  What topic would you recommend removing from the class next year?
  9. How often and how extensively did you use the posted lecture notes?
  10. Were there any specific topics in the course where you felt more examples were needed?
  11. The project is a major component of this course.  How much time did you spend on the project, and do you believe that the time was “valuable”?
  12. I’ve been starting every lecture with an engineering motivation.  Was this useful, or did you “just wish the lecture would get started”?   Why?
  13. Imagine you could give one suggestion for the course, and that it would be required reading by the next instructor one or two weeks before class starts.  What would that suggestion be?

**Course Evaluations were launched on Monday, November 26th, not Tuesday, November 27th.