UCDT

Global Change I -- Fall 1997

Final Assessment Instrument Results

January 12, 1998

Student Comments About General Improvements:

howimprove: Make any discussions in the lab more reinforcing of what we discuss in lecture. More lab time spent reviewing for exams. Clearer lab and assignment questions.

howimprove: Make the exams more straight forward

howimprove: I really Stella is a wonderful tool, but I think more time needs to be spent on understanding the concepts rather than running the model. Perhaps this is my fault as well since the lab outline is posted on the web. Organized study groups!!!

howimprove: have the stella labs be much more explained at the beginning and have the lectures be much more closely related to the labs it is vitally important that you make sure the students understand the point of stella and how it will be used in the course before you begin with the labs!! remember that many of us have never seen this model before and have a minimal knowledge of computers in general

howimprove: Put lecture visuals, web notes, etc. in a coursepack instead of on the web, or at least in addition to the material on the web.

howimprove: I enjoyed the course and wouldn't change a thing.

howimprove: Take it off the web and have a course pack available. It is very

inconvenient and expensive to print out lab notes and study material from the web.

howimprove: Choose better labs. I think instead of doing computer programs inside, that we should go outside and do more hands-on activities. And, reduce the amount of busy-work. Some assignments required little thought, but took up lots of time. I don't see why that is necessary. And, since everyone prints out the web notes, why not just create a course packet available to the students of the notes to save them a significant amount of time.

howimprove: Spend more time in lab reviewing for exams.

howimprove: less STELLA, and more discussion about the repercussions that some of the topics we discuss in lecture has on us in everyday life.

howimprove: Add more labs like the trip to the museum.

howimprove: Making the web notes very comprehensive and maybe having one

less lecture so the student doesn't have to make the transition to different teaching styles all the time

howimprove: less lab assignments, they get repetitive and lose the ability to interest people in the subject matter.

howimprove: Give students a review sheet for exams to supplement the lecture notes. Basically something that shows the main points that should be understood.

howimprove: More encouragement on getting students to attend lectures.

howimprove: The one main thing I would do to improve this course is to cut out

the poster project. I feel it takes up too much time and is worth way too many points.

howimprove: decide on lecture material to be posted on the web earlier on and then stick too it. At times it was frustrating trying to figure out what notes we were going to use an which ones were about to be scrapped. It would have been nice to get those five (or so) sets of notes a bit earlier before the second midterm.

howimprove: less computer modeling too many facts crammed in too little time

howimprove: I can't think of anything except maybe a field trip somewhere. then again the class is rather large, and would be difficult to organize. and where would there be one? it was an idea.

howimprove: More videos

howimprove: sorry I didn't include any professor evaluations cos my comments about them are the same as the last evaluation I did.

howimprove: NO MORE STELLA!

howimprove: i would improve it more by organizing the group project better. it was hard to first find a group and then try to meet them if we didn't even have the same discussion.

howimprove: Well I think that the course was good for what it was intended, I wish that I had taken the second semester instead of the first, I think that for me personally I am more interested in the human aspects of global change, instead of the scientific aspects.

howimprove: Somehow, think of a way to get people to class.

howimprove: More test material from in class instead of just on the web

howimprove: Make lectures more interesting and not just a verbatim of the web

notes. More students would attend class that way also.

howimprove: The course material is interesting, but the lectures just were not. Make the rest of the lectures more like the first month's lectures.

howimprove: The material was not the issue, I think the instructors have chosen

the material well, but it is presented in such a way that it makes it extremely boring to listen too.I never wanted to come to class, because it felt like I was not really learning anything.

howimprove: Make the evaluations shorter

howimprove: proofread labs and lecture notes. add female professors. do less stella--it started giving me a headache after awhile. Also, I think it is SO DUMB that the last week of class, we have poster projects, another lab, AND a final. That's too much!

howimprove: I would give out a coursepack so we didn't have to waste all of our money printing out the lecture notes.

howimprove: Less stella modeling. Feels like highschool when just following directions.

howimprove: Discuss lecture material in lab. Don't grade so tuff on all of those stella projects

howimprove: choose material covered more carefully, and less of it. try tying it together better. go more in depth with the subjects chosen.

howimprove: I would like some of the topics to be more in depth, rather than jumping to the next topic.

howimprove: devote more time to organization rather than to web pages and

e-mail articles. Also, try to avoid making the midterms rote-memorization, it adds nothing to the learning experience.

howimprove: This is truly one of the best informative classes I have taken at this university. Unfortunately, I was not able to enjoy it as I would have liked too since I had some problems in the begining of the course.

howimprove: I think that some of the lab assignments were unnecessary. For instance, I didn't think it was important to go to the museum. I thought that the information on how to create a webpage should have been offered outside of class as it was for the poster projects. Some people already knew how to do this, and others never used the skill anyways, because they used a poster for their project. I also thought the webfinder project was silly. I really enjoyed the Stella models, and also the class discussions, however, I think things could have been tied to lecture a little bit better.

howimprove: The lectures are extremely boring, and half of the material covered seems completely unrelated to global change. I did learn some, but it was more about photosynthesis and other things which seemingly is not within the sphere of the material.

howimprove: I would publish the lecture notes in a course pack type of book, rather than on the web; I presume most use the website for lecture notes, and its often hard to study sitting in one location staring into a computer screen! (and printing all the notes out takes at least an hour--not to mention, drains your ITD account!)

howimprove: I thought that there were too many instructors and also that to much emphasis was placed on Stella labs.

howimprove: more in depth information in the lectures reorganize web notes to improve readability

howimprove: less stella

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howimprove: Change the lab setups and if there is going to be a decision make it relevant to the information in lecture. Also the schedule for the labs should be reorganized. Instead of having a movie on a normal week and a lab to do on a vacation week, change the order to ensure the students are paying full attention. And make sure the busy work that is (the labs) are finished BEFORE finals week- not during!

howimprove: Less use of STELLA