I am always very nervous when student evaluations come in. They are usually very good, but I am occasionally painfully jarred by the comments of a student. Although we are not supposed to say so, sometimes I can tell what student wrote the comments. Usually it is because they are complaining about a situation that only applies to them.
This time I didn’t have any negatives, but some of the numbers weren’t what I was expecting. This is a new way to do student evals for me and I wasn’t quite sure what I should do. They have questions you have to weight. And they offer you the opportunity to write your own open-ended questions.
I liked the open-ended questions. The students really made an effort to answer them.
Here is one of my questions and all my students’ responses. (Or at least the responses of all the students who answered the question.)
We wrote a narrative, a descriptive, a compare/contrast, a definition/exemplification, an argument, and a classification paper in class. Of these papers, which was most useful or interesting to you? Please explain why.
I enjoyed writing about the argument paper and the classification paper because they were of interest to me.
The most useful and interesting paper to me was the compare/contrast one between my two suite mates because I had a chance to express my thoughts about these two friends, who have had major influences on me since my family is not here.
I will admit that all those papers helped me improve my writing skills. The most interesting paper, for me, was the narrative essay because I felt like I could express myself.
The most useful paper was the descriptive one. It was most useful because of the unique and positive ways of describing the learning process of reading and writing.
I think that of these papers the Definition essay was the one which I enjoyed writing the most. It is also one of the essays that I think will be helpful for me in the future.
The compare/contrast paper was the most fun to write because I was able to write about two of my favorite events in the year, The Tokyo Game Show and E3.
The descriptive paper was the most interesting to me, because it was about something that we own and what I wrote about was very important to me. Not only did I have to write a paper about my object, but I was able to do other things before I wrote it, like writing a riddle. I never wrote a riddle about something that I was going to write about, but I think that this assignment prepared me to write my paper.
The most interesting essay was the definition because it was mostly my values and my ideas of the topic.
The compare and contrast was the most interesting. I used two characters from two of my favorite books and I was able to express my ideas on paper.
The compare/contrast and the classification. I knew more about the subject that I was writing on than the other papers, even more than the narrative.
The most interesting paper to me was the definition/exemplification paper because you were able to express yourself more than in other papers.
Of all the papers written in and out of class, the most interesting and useful to me was the compare/contrast paper. In the compare/contrast paper I had the opportunity to include the pros and cons on almost any subject.
All of them, because they improved my grammar.
The narrative was the most interesting. I got a chance to do some writing that I love to do.
That paper that was most helpful was the descriptive paper. It helped me learn to describe objects better.
A definition paper was the best for me because it let me get one topic and explain what it really meant Maybe that is not what most people would think of, but that’s my personal opinion.
Descriptive. When it comes to describing things, I rank at the bottom of the list. Writing the paper helped me to improve in that section.
Argument because I have to write argument papers for some of my other classes. So this was a good way for me to earn some more experience on writing argument papers.
Compare/contrast because I could explain more on this topic and because I got a good grade.
When I say the numbers weren’t what I expected, on a five-point scale the lowest I received was a 3.7 and I was in the top half throughout the evaluation. My average was a 4.3, which includes the data for “excellent course.” Since it was a required remedial course, I didn’t expect that one to be high.