My Favorite Teaching Evals (Spring 14 Edition)

I need to sit down and read them all carefully, but it's time to look at some of my favorite comments from classes I taught in Spring 2014. We're going to focus here on jour3410, a required class for journalism and public relations majors. I teach the lecture and one lab, so to keep it simple let's look just at what the folks had to say about my 160-student lecture.

What did they dislike? Here's one I get every semester:

So early in the morning! Yikes!

Because, ya see, the lecture is at 9:05 a.m. Mondays and Wednesdays. Not because I love early mornings, but so we have more flexibility in scheduling the labs associated with the class.

Here's a problem I'm not sure how to handle.

I feel that the professor talked too much about stories that he had written in the past that didn't all seem to be relevant to the course material.

I tell a few "war stories" to illustrate the textbook stuff. So if the chapter is covering such terms as subpoena and deposition, I tell a story in which I faced. Some don't like it. Some do. For example, asked what he or she liked best about the class, one student said:

The interesting stories the professor told.

So, it's hard to change. I have a lot of comments like the one above. Oh, here's one I'd never seen before on dislikes. It's about exams:

His test questions were sometimes just obscure things that he had said.

That's an interesting observation above. Will have to give that one some thought.

Okay, there are some good things. Like:

I loved Hollander's teaching style and sense of humor. The material was not always interesting but he found ways to make it appeal to me more.

or

The professor! He is awesome and I love how he interacts with the class. I learned a lot from his lectures. They were interesting and informative. 

and maybe my favorite:

By far one of the most memorable professors I have had.  He was very enthusiastic about material. Did learn more than the first Journalism class with Soloski.

One student said the best part was how "lively" I was in class. The worst part? How "lively" I was in class. "He could have toned it down."

Heh.