T. E. Roberts, Instructor | USF
Sarasota-Manatee
Course Evaluations
By Students | Fall 2003 to Present
Page updated 20 November 2008
|
Clicking
on the link at the bottom of this page will result in downloading a compressed
(zipped) document containing evaluations of courses by my students from Fall
2003 to Summer 2008 in Adobe PDF format. The combined evaluations since Fall
2003 represent a large file (more than 22 MB); links are also provided for
evaluations from individual semesters. These are exact scans of the original
USF evaluation results; no changes of any kind occur in these documents. Each
evaluation consists of two parts: (1)
statistical
results of a questionnaire about the course (“best” = 5.0), and (2)
brief
anonymous comments by individual students. Beginning with
the Summer 2008 evaluations, I provide a brief response to selected student
comments in order to address a student’s confusion or to correct an obvious
misunderstanding. One theme
remains constant through the student comments over the years: the students
who feel they benefited from a course tended to: 1) pay attention
to instructions 2) try to
improve their work 3) communicate
regularly with the instructor, and 4) treat the
learning experience, the instructor, and their classmates with respect and
professionalism. A NOTE ABOUT
COMMENTS Anonymity
obviously is a two-edged sword. It provides confidentiality but may also
violate an individual’s right to due process. Students are
asked to be fair, honest, and unbiased in their appraisals of the course and
the instructor. However, based on surveys conducted by me and other faculty
members over the years, it is obvious that most students who write negative
appraisals have never sought individual conferences with the instructor. In my
judgment, the university has instituted a well-considered process for the
filing of formal student grievances (http://www.ugs.usf.edu/catalogs/0607/arcsagp.htm).
The first step is for a student to confer directly and personally with his or
her instructor. This usually results in the settling of any misunderstanding,
and this procedure should also apply in any disagreement between a
student and an instructor. In the absence
of such a conference (especially in online courses where most communications
occur via email), it is easy for a student to feel slighted because he or she
is simply unhappy with a grade. This happens occasionally with people who
think of themselves as “A students” but who earn a B+ or other, in their
view, unsatisfactory grade. If such a student has never bothered to discuss
the evaluation of an assignment at the time it is submitted and graded, the
resentment at the end of a term over an “unfair” final grade may lead to an
unfounded negative appraisal of an instructor or a course. In
fairness, the student should first accept individual responsibility for the
outcome of his or her performance in a course. This is one reason that I emphasize throughout the
course that a student EARNS a grade based on performance. The instructor DOES
NOT “GIVE” a grade. The dates
below correspond to the semester in which the courses were presented. These
include the following:
Fall 2003
(1.8 MB) Spring 2004
(1.8 MB) Summer 2004
(1.2 MB) Fall 2004 (2.5
MB) Spring 2005
(3.0 MB) Summer 2005
(1.0 MB) Fall 2005
(2.4 MB) Spring 2006
(3.4 MB) Summer 2006
(1.1 MB) Fall 2006
(1.0 MB) Spring 2007
(292 KB) Summer 2007
(1.1 MB) Fall 2007
(772 KB) Spring 2008
(1 MB) Summer 2008
(276 KB) Fall
2008 (to be posted early March 2009) All Evaluations To Date (single
zipped file, 22.3 MB) |