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Re: Are student evaluations useful?



At 08:55 AM 11/19/97 -0600, Joel wrote:

Perhaps it is some bit of hyperbole to interpret the results as the
students
view being "encouraged to think" as bad teaching; but I don't think its
hyperbole to interpret their view as its being "bothersome teaching" and
something they don't want in this course.

I don't happen to have any students handy at the moment, but how about
asking them? Who is teaching an articulate group of pre-meds or other
non-physical-science types?

From my own experience in teaching a radically-structured lecture-lean
course which relied heavily on cooperative learning, students said they had
to work and think far harder for me than they did in other courses. They
also said, by the end of the course, that it was worth it. These were
engineering students who realized that physics and calculus were reasonably
important to them.

Other students who are taking physics to satisfy some rule would be less
sanguine, I would guess.

But enough speculation. Can someone do the measurement, probably on some
non-calculus physics students?

JEG

__________________________________

John E. Gastineau gastineau@mindspring.com KC8IEW
900 B Ridgeway Ave. http://gastineau.home.mindspring.com
Morgantown WV 26505 (304) 296-1966