Catherine Rawn

It’s Student Evaluation of Teaching season here at UBC. Students in all 3 credit courses ending next week (next week!!!!)  are being asked to spend some time filling out the online student evaluations for your Instructors and Teaching Assistants (or Teaching Fellows, as in the case of our Psyc 217 course).

While it might seem that these evaluations disappear into oblivion after you complete them… that is *not* the case! For one, they’re considered as one very important piece of the puzzle of evaluating good teaching when it comes to promotion and tenure decisions at UBC. And every year this is increasingly true. Second, many individual instructors consider your feedback very carefully, and use it to make real changes to their courses. See one of my earlier posts for examples of how I’ve taken this feedback, thought deeply about it, and made changes where I could. See my evaluations page for a historical summary of my student evaluations, particularly the 6 University Module Items common across campus.

Please visit https://eval.olt.ubc.ca/arts to complete your evaluations. I care about what you have to say, and so do our Teaching Assistants and Teaching Fellows. Constructive feedback (what’s gone well, what suggestions do you have for improvement) is always most welcome.

For more about UBC’s teaching evaluation process, please see this website.

Over the weekend I gave the keynote address at this interesting, student-driven conference. It united students, faculty, and community members from all across the country to question our assumptions about education and to promote innovation. Consistent with this spirit, in my keynote I discussed my section of Psyc 208 (Psychology in your life: How social psychology can help you succeed). I have created that course with students in mind from the very start. I strive to create a course that matters, and I challenge both educators and students (yes, it’s a two-way street!) to make education matter. I also discuss how the course has changed from the first time I taught it to the second, and share how I have relied on student feedback to make important changes for the better. If you’ve taken the course before, plan to take it in January, or are interested in course (re)design more broadly, check out the video here.

Congratulations to Tyler Nelson and the entire planning team for a great conference. If you’d like to check out more about the conference, we had a twitter feed going all day long (search for #ice2011) and videos from all of the interesting speakers are available here.

Almost 600 students are enrolled in my classes this semester, and an additional 250 next semester. I will not be able to learn every single student’s name, at least not very well. But I try! And I suspect by the end of the term (end of the year for Psyc 100 — which goes until April), I’ll know a decent proportion of that large number. To do this, I constantly test myself, guessing and then asking students again (and sometimes again) until names stick. After answering a student’s question after class yesterday, she turned to go and I said, “…and it’s [her correct name!], right?” She turned and said yes, but with a puzzled look on her face. She said to me something like, “there are so many students, why do you bother trying to learn our names?”

Why do I bother trying to learn names??? The question caught me off guard. Startled, I stuttered, “well, because I care. I guess that’s what it comes down to.” It may sound trite, but I do care. I wish I could personally know every one of my students. I think that would enrich our classroom experience greatly. Indeed, the more students I get to know the more fascinating life stories I hear, and the more insight I get into what it means to be a student now, today — not more than a decade ago when I started my undergrad degree. I’ve felt the change in the classroom environment that happens when students realize I know who they are and remember them and notice when they’re not there that day. It motivates me in my teaching and lesson planning when I can think of the individuals who will be there, looking to me for guidance about what and how to learn. Of course, I can’t remember everyone. But I won’t stop trying. Because I care.

I have the great privilege of speaking at two fantastic student-driven conferences this month. Check out the websites and mark your calendars!

First, on Saturday October 15 in the new sustainable CIRS buiding, is ICE 2011: the Interuniversity Conference on Education. The focus is on innovations in education, and I’ll be speaking about how I’ve approached the question “Why should any student care about my class?” Check out the agenda and my talk abstract here. Everyone is welcome, and registration is free!

Second, on Monday October 24, is the kick-off to CLASS: Conference on Learning and Academic Student Success. This year it’s a full week of workshops and speakers geared toward helping first year and otherwise new-to-UBC students transition to life at UBC-V. I’ll be speaking about  ”What I’ve Learned that has Changed my Life” at the opening ceremony.  I met with organizing team members Julie and Bowen this morning for a brief interview. Check it out on the CLASS website or a direct link to Youtube here.

Exciting times! Hope to see you there!

I can’t believe it’s almost October! This month has flown by! Yesterday I gave my first midterm tests in both my Research Methods (Psyc 217 Sections 001 and 002) and Intro (Psyc 100 Section 002) courses. That’s always a stressful day trying to ensure the most consistent and quality conditions for all 600 students. Overall I think they went smoothly.

In this post I described my plan to concentrate this semester on revamping the exams in my research methods courses. I’m pleased to report that I considered and re-considered each question, and ensured that each question was related to a learning objective either from the texts or class. To make this possible I created learning objectives for each chapter in the Stanovich text that I shared with my students and used as a starting point when creating/reconsidering exam questions. This strategy was in response to feedback from students who reported that the most important points in the Stanovich book were sometimes difficult to discern (he tends to go on a bit). If you’re in this course I’d love to hear feedback from you about how the exam went. Drop by my office hour or send me an email (or leave a comment here).

What I re-experience every September is how much I enjoy getting to know my students. When I know who you are and a bit about you it makes preparing for class and our time during class more fun. I’ve really enjoyed our conversations so far, and I look forward to getting to know as many of my 600 students this term as possible!