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Teacher evaluations for 1st year physics



I am the only full-time person teaching physics in an engineering technology
division of a community & technical college (part of the University of Akron).
I was talking to my division chair today about my evaluation of teaching number
s -- he thought I should work on minimizing my evaluation "range" which is usua
lly something like "low to high" or "medium to high". I believe I'm at a disad
vantage to the rest of the department because mine is the only 100% service cou
rse offered.....my students have to take physics because its required, not beca
use it's part of a field that they are directly interested in (at least that's
the way the kids usually see it). Students who do well to reasonably well in
the class tend to rate me fairly high.....the ones who don't do well (usually n
ot even coming for help after I request it) rate me low.

This brings me to my question: What do those of you teaching first year physic
s to non-majors (or mostly non-majors) tend to get on your teacher evaluations?
Do you see a big range/ high standard deviation?

As an aside, I have done things to bring up my "scores" in the past but I'm not
sure how reasonable it is to expect all high or even medium to high ratings.
For instance, I do: cooperative learning, conceptual demonstrations/questions,
totally changed our mechanics labs to Realtime Physics computer based, help ses
sions, etc.

Thanks in advance for any input!
Sue Ramlo
Asst. Prof of General Technology & Coord of GT
Community & Technical College, U of Akron