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My recent student evaluations included the following comment:

“Considering I remember what she taught even now, phenomenal.”

I was thrilled to receive this comment. Every teacher hopes and dreams that the student will remember the class material, not just for the exam but as something that will be of relevance to their professional life beyond the confines of school. Bearing in mind that student feedback is completely anonymous, a comment like this is so encouraging and fulfilling for me as an educator.

Of course, as you might expect for a large course, there are also critical comments. One challenge for me is clearly the preparation of the handout:

“Some of the figures and examples were confusing in the handout.”

“Good lecturer. Only comment is to change the format of the prion lecture handout to allow it to be more easily read (paragraph form, less “cut and paste” images). It was very difficult to go over the handout and study from it for the exam due to the format, even though I originally understood everything during the lecture presentation.”

“The subject material was dense, but presented well. Because the information was so dense, I thought the handouts could have had little more detail provided (more textbook style like many of the other handouts) … but that, of course, is a matter of personal preference. I thought the lectures filled in the gaps and was well paced.”

“I think her notes would benifit greatly from an ‘outline’ style of material presentation”

“The secretion lecture was a bit confusing…I had holes in my notes from the lecture where I didn’t understand things mentioned and the handout was not particularly helpful in filling in those gaps.”

The interesting aspect about these comments was that I received similar criticisms of my handouts in student evaluations last year and I thought I had taken special care to put together an improved handout. But obviously there is still an issue here.

To address the issue, I have decided to seek advice from the Center for Teaching Excellence here at Cornell. I sent off the evaluations, lectures and notes and I have a consultation session scheduled for tomorrow. It will be very interesting and hopefully revealing to see what the teaching professionals have to say!

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