Student Evaluations
EART 120 Sedimentology and Stratigraphy at U.C. Santa Cruz, 2012
These are some examples of feedback I received from the official TA evaluations for this course. Responses were recorded anonymously, and students were asked to write an evaulation of the TA's teaching performance and to also provide constructive criticism and suggestions to improve teaching.
Performance Evaluations:
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"Stephanie was very engaging. She prepared her introductions and explanations very well."
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"Stephanie was an awesome TA! She was consistently helpful and fun! She knows so much!"
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"Overall good job, very helpful in the field."
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"Always prepared, able to answer in depth questions. She was very helpful in the microscope labs and an extremely great TA to have when out in the field."
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"Stephanie has been a great TA. Extremely helpful in lab, office hours and during field trips. I was very pleased with her performance and energy throughout the course."
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"Great - I like that before the lab, there were specific instructions on the board aside from what was written in the lab. Very knowledgeable and willing to help. For the microscope lab, it was helpful to have the primer emailed to us before lab."
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Criticisms and Suggestions:
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"Work on better explaining how to make stereonets." - This was the first lab I taught for this course, and I did not realize how unprepared I was. After reviewing stereonets more, I held extra sessions that week to help students with this lab. I also learned a valuable lesson on honestly assessing my own understanding of material and how to better prepare for teaching.
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"Slow down explanations"
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"Relax"
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"Speak loudly"
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"Was intimidating at the beginning of the quarter but became easier to talk to later on."
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"Talk less at the beginning of labs. The info you say is helpful, but if we have to finish a certain amount of stuff in lab and we have access to everything being said its kinda frustrating."
I learned from these criticisms that my presence and composure are very important to my teaching effectiveness, not just the material I am presenting, and have actively worked on improving these skills since.
EAS 1220 Earthquake! at Cornell University, 2016
These are some examples of feedback I received from the mid-semester official TA evaluations for this course. Full evaluation form as provided by the College of Engineering here. Responses were recorded anonymously, and students were asked to rate the TA (on a scale of 1=Poor to 5=Excellent) on twenty statements about TA performance, as well as answer further questions about students' interactions with the TA. For the quantitative responses, I received an average of 4.43 out of 5.00.
1. Comment on the TA's teaching strengths as well as areas in which improvement is needed or encouraged.
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"Great at everything on the teaching aspect but could improve getting across the point is a contextual explanatory way"
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"She is good at hearing what students are struggling in and making sure all of us know what is going on."
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"approachable"
2. Comment on the TA's communication strategies. Did the TA effective use gestures, movement, voice inflection, and maintain eye contact? Was language a barrier to your understanding? If so, in what way?
- "Speaks clearly and writes effectively when sending messages to the class. "
- "Overall speech when teaching was good there was nothing holding her back"
- "She is good with her communication, is makes sense and speaks a lot slower than our professor which helps so much because people miss a lot of what he says because he speaks so fast."
3. Do you have any additional comments?
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"She's a good TA."
I used responses from this mid-semester evaluation to steer self-reflection and improvement of my performance and interactions with students during the remainder of the class.