Course Evaluation Data and Information
for English 511: Theory and Research in Composition
Spring Semester, 2006
Prof. Chris M. Anson
Before you begin: I strongly believe that teaching well is a lifelong pursuit--an art to be explored and developed, and a science that constantly presents new challenges and opportunities for analysis and growth. As a teacher, I am very much a learner. I need to reflect on what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. Student evaluations are one source of information for me to reflect and improve. As such, I use them formatively, as information helpful in the improvement of a significant part of my professional life: teaching students and teaching other teachers.
But student evaluations can also have a more public function, displaying areas of my teaching that students find to be strong, and areas they find to be in need of improvement. Below, you will see evaluation data from the course and term indicated above, along with a bit of reflection from me about what I see in these numbers and comments. Please use this information responsibly. If you're deciding whether to take a course from me, consider what you see here not only as evidence of ability, but as evidence of my willingness to listen to your peers and improve my teaching in ways that respond to their justified concerns and needs. If you're a fellow professional looking at these data because you want to learn about or evaluate my work, please consider them only as one part of an overall plan for teacher effectiveness and a lifelong pursuit of excellence.
In some cases, where appropriate, I have included anonymously written comments from the students in the course. If so, I have created a kind of "dialogue" from some of these comments by interspersing my own (italicized) thoughts and reflections, and on ways to address specific concerns the next time I teach the course. By working on areas of concern, I can then match student opinions in future courses against those here to see whether the changes are having a positive impact on the course and on students.
The following chart shows each question on the NC State University-Wide Evaluation of Instruction form. In the first box after the question appears the weighted mean of the results for that question (based on a scale of 1-5, as shown below). 5.0 is the highest mean score possible (every student would give a score of 5 on that question).
|
Score of 5:
|
Strongly Agree
|
|
Score of 4:
|
Agree
|
|
Score of 3:
|
Neutral
|
|
Score of 2:
|
Disagree
|
|
Score of 1:
|
Strongly Disagree
|
|
QUESTION FROM FORM |
Ave. Score |
|---|---|
| 1. The instructor stated course objectives/outcomes. |
4.9 |
| 2. The instructor was receptive to students outside the classroom. |
4.9 |
| 3. The instructor explained difficult material well. |
4.7 |
| 4. The instructor was enthusiastic about teaching the course. |
4.9 |
| 5. The instructor was prepared for class. |
4.9 |
| 6. The instructor gave prompt and useful feedback. |
4.8 |
| 7. The instructor effectively used instructional technology. |
4.9 |
| 8. The instructor consistently treated students with respect. |
4.9 |
| 9. Overall, the instructor was an effective teacher. |
4.9 |
| 10. The course readings were valuable aids to learning. |
4.6 |
| 11. The course assignments were valuable aids to learning. |
4.6 |
| 12. This course was intellectually challenging and stimulating. |
4.8 |
| 13. This course improved my knowledge of the subject. |
4.8 |
| 14. Overall, this course was excellent. | 4.9 |
|
4.9 |
What these numbers are telling me: I made a number of changes in this iteration of ENG 511 that I think are reflected in students' high satisfaction with the course. First, in the previous section I taught, I had identified on an anonymous midterm course evaluation considerable anxiety about the relationship between theory and practice. Because this is a course that prepares M.A. students to teach composition the following year, students tend to be worried about how to apply various theories and research in their own instruction. By making explicit some of these connections, I may have reduced some of that anxiety and prepared students more fully for their experience in the TA-development course, ENG 624. Although 511 is an introduction to the field of composition studies and its base of scholarship, so much of that focuses on instructional issues that it's not difficult to give students a conceptual framework for the application of that scholarship to classroom instruction. I also provided more support for the larger projects, and used more creative, hybrid assignments for the shorter papers.
Anonymous Written Comments from Students (from the evaluations):