Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Midterm Course Evaluation

With this being week 5 of the quarter, I like to give the students an informal midterm evaluation to see how things are going for them in the course. This not only gives them an opportunity to evaluate the class, but it also gives me an idea of the students' opinions of course materials, activites, etc. and helps me to see the changes I need to make to better help the students the rest of the quarter.

The questions I ask them to respond to are -
  • What's working for you?
  • What's not?
You can find their responses to these two questions by clicking on the comments link below.

36 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's good! I like the interaction between you,Cate and students in class and the informal but intelligentual atmosphere. Thanks a lot! Cate, you really make a "seems" boring composition class interesting.

Anonymous said...

Too many assignments

Anonymous said...

In my opinion, this course is so helpful. This course can give me ability to summarize long reading stuff and make me think more creatively. Writing my own summary and autobibliography makes me more helpful to understand long and difficult reading stuff. So good for me.
It takes a lot of time to follow this course. In my case, I read all 5 articles and worte 5 autobibliography during whole weekend. However, the harder, the better for my writing skills and understanding stuff.

Thank you, Cate.

Anonymous said...

4 hours per week is too much, 2 hours might be sufficient

Anonymous said...

I think 108.02 class is a professional class because students can improve their ability such as English, their field.Also,in the class we learn new writing fomes that we do not try.It is very interesting for students.

Anonymous said...

The class is useful and informative for me. However as the topic of the class tend to be very different from my own field,sometimes I feel like I don't understand what is going on in the class. I know it is a very diverse class which can be difficult to answer everyone's needs.
The projects for the course is useful as we can choose the topic.

Anonymous said...

I think class is going well.
Group dicussion is helpful for sharing idea.
However, For some task,especially,music department is hard to related with
what teacher wants.Also,many assingment is hard to do because of my major task.

Anonymous said...

Overall classes were very helpful. Cate was always pretty and kind. I like you cate. But can you reduce some homework? Thank you so much

Anonymous said...

This class is usefull to imporove writing skill especially structure. I still have many grammer problems such as articles, so I think I need more time to work on. I belive it will be imporoved gradually.
I am happy to study in this class, my teacher is energetic (she always give us nice feedback)and classmates are funny. :)

Anonymous said...

It's so nice class. I enjoy this class and I feel that I can learn something. However, we have too much homework to do.

Anonymous said...

I am taking English course 108.02, which is very helpful for my understanding of academic writing. I like the way it is tought, the teacher gives a lot of information and material during the class, hence, students don't have to spend too much time for this at home. And it is helpful, since most of the graduate students are doing research. The most useful process in this class for me is discussing topics with teacher and in groups during the class. This way it is not boring. I am applying my knowledge from this class to other courses already. The only thing that is not useful is the book. It is hard to read and it is not worth of buying. Photocopies are woring well, since we are not using it a lot.

Anonymous said...

I'm Gunhak Lee taking the class, 108.02, 10:30am.

This course seems to be useful in improving the skills for academic writing because I am getting familiar with the academic writing systematically.

What I'm thinking of this course as cool is the useful materials, well organized class schedules and friendly teaching & feedback.

I hope this kind of course would keep me going well for academic writings.

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

I think it depends to the student to make the course interesting,but to do so one has to have more time to spend which is a little bit impossible for grad. students

Anonymous said...

I love the teaching method. The foucs on grammar, structure and vocabulary really benefit my writting. It's also interesting to have a glimpse of acedemic writting which we were not exposed to as business students.

Anonymous said...

I am taking 108.02 English writing course at 10:30.

I think this course enable me to improve Enlgish writing skill and to give me many chances to write academic writngs. It is helpful to me.

Anonymous said...

I appreciate...I think this class is surly helpful for us to write one's thesis or proposal.

Anonymous said...

Grammar review was helpful.
Reporting verbs, how to summarize, annotated bib, I learned lots of basic knowledge for academic papers.
Class atomosphere is great and I feel ease to speak out my thought during class hours.

Anonymous said...

I'm happy because I have an great opportunity to learn academic writing. I like your interactive lecture style. Also I think you are a good and qualified teacher in this course.
However, too many assignments and handouts makes me feel difficult. Actually my dept. does not reqire strict academic writing. I do not write thesis in my course. our purpose is to get a job!

Anonymous said...

What's working for you?

I think the advantage of this course to me is that I could develop the ability in writing abstract and summary. Through the class discussion, I also learned how to evaluate the articles I read. The atmosphere in the classroom is relaxed and very helpful for learning process.

Anonymous said...

I like the atmosphere in the classroom, especially when the students were discussing, speaking out their opinions. You don't know whether you really understand something until you put your thought on paper(or speak out).

We have received quite a few handouts. But I think we need more writting excercises. If the assignments have less reading, more writting, it should be more helpful.

Anonymous said...

It's good and helpful for scientific writing. And, the class communication is beneficial for our spoken English training.

Anonymous said...

This class is very helpful for my English composition, it makes me more familiar with the style of acdamical paper. I think the assignments are OK, they are helpful and I bet it will influence me in the future research, I mean how to write a good paper in the sense of style and choosing words. Cate, thanks for your help!

Anonymous said...

I am very clear through the blackboard what we need to do in and after class every class. Thank you Cate! This class is helpful for me.

Anonymous said...

The English 108.02 is quite useful to improve my academic writing. What I learned in the classes gave me a good start of academic writing. However, if we could have more time to complete the homework, that would be perfect.
In addition, I really enjoy your lecture, Kate. Thank you.

Anonymous said...

I like group discussion in class.
Assignments are a little bit much.

Anonymous said...

It seems everything is ok to me.I learn more in this class (12:30).
I need to imporove writing skill especially in structure.

Anonymous said...

Its a progressive course, we do learn a lot from this class. However, we expect our assignments be checked more seriously, and gain more advices from them. Besides, since it's a required class to most of the international students, it would be better if the students from the same(similar)field are arranged in one class,and would be easier for us to understand the field-dep. typical type of writing.

Anonymous said...

I think this class is so helpful to understand how to write English compositions and to learn how to enhance writing skills for journals and articles about my study field. Especially, the atmosphere of this class is so exciting because of instructor's passionate teaching style and expertise for foreign students.

Anonymous said...

In my opinion, this class is helpful for me in academic life.
This quarter i am going to complete my first proposal. I can acquire much knowledge about writing proposal in Cate's class.
However, the class begings at 1230. IT SUCKS!!! I used to take a snap through this period. I always feel sleepy in class....

Anonymous said...

Appreciate for Cate's beneficial assistance. The aasignments allocated by Cate make logical progress in order to improve my academic writting ability step by step. Moreover, It forces me to read a lot of paper in my field, which helps me to enter into my research topic rapidly.
Nevertheless, There are some homeworks with which I can not satisfy. For instance, the grammar exercises. Maybe main concentration could be focused on how to write a attractive academic paper successfully.

Anonymous said...

108.02 is helpful. Great teachers with appropriate exercises. I think international students are not good at the usage of the words, for example, when and where to use a beautiful word (Well, maybe just myself). So I think we can have more in-class little exercises about word usage. We need more games playing around with words!

Anonymous said...

Too much homework and reading materials. I haven't enough time to read the articles.

Anyway,I like the class.

Anonymous said...

Seems too much materials and assignment.

Anonymous said...

What we did in class was very different than I thougt. i thougth it was going to be a useless composition class. But it is useul. It mainly focuses on what we need to write as a researcher. I also enjoy the class.Cate encourages for discussions, sharing ideas .... The assignments are ok up to now.

Anonymous said...

It's very nice to have a casual and informal atmosphere in the class. I really like your class!

Anonymous said...

As Ph.D student at early stages of a research activity, this class is really being helpful for me. I liked being in that class, thanks Cate. Before finishin, I should say that I agree comments about homeworks being too many. Maybe, it is not actually too many, but since we are all busy enough with courses, research, and teaching, number of homeworks seems a lot for me. But anyway, that's a nice class; and I am happy to being here.