Tag: Department

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Announcements

Course Evaluations

Hello All,

Last Friday I went to a meeting with a handful of student representatives and Dr. Kathryn Harrison, the Associate Dean of Arts, regarding course evaluations. The reason for the meeting was simple – response rates  have been dropping steadily every semester since evaluations were put online. As it stands, the completion rate for the faculty is somewhere around 50%.

The Dean’s office is working hard to fix to this problem, but the solution ultimately rests with students. I know you have probably heard this before, but course evaluations really, really matter. Departments take them extremely seriously when deciding whether or not to promote professors, and when assigning merit pay. Professors, for their part, really care about how they are evaluated by their students. Your professors are here to help you learn but remember,  they see the classroom from a very different perspective than you do, so student feedback is critical for them to make their classes the best they can possibly be.

Please, do your part to make UBC the best it can be for its student community and fill in your course evaluations. It will only take 10 minutes of your time – both your peers and your professors will be thankful.

Categories
Academic

Town Hall Meeting

About 25 students assembled today in Buchanan D 316 for the Annual Undergraduate Town Hall.

UBC History Department Undergraduate Town Hall

For those of you who have never been, the Undergraduate Town Hall is something that Daniel Vickers, our department head, has been hosting for many years. It is considered a means of opening the debate about the History program up to the students and finding out what it is that students are hoping to gain from their degrees.

While there are struggles that continue to be brought up annually (ex. course diversity, class sizes etc.) some topics that were unique to this years session involved an investigation on the effectiveness of discussions in courses and how to best go about them. Some people felt that discussion should be relegated to an online format and that class time should be reserved for lecture whereas others liked the opposite idea of having discussion homework assignments that would require students to have done their readings.

Amidst all of the serious talk there were also many lighthearted moments as Professor Vickers opened up to the students about the realities of contacting the university administration down to the intimidating nature of teaching for people who have never been taught to teach.

Finally, there were also snacks provided – which was totally a bonus!

As someone who has attended three of these now I can tell you that the profs do listen to us. At a previous town hall I had suggested that 6 credit courses needed to be shortened into two 3 credit courses instead – this was mainly to better support the idea of someone going on exchange, or doing a co-op. I can tell you I have noticed that a lot of courses are run in two separate parts which has opened up more possibilities to students whose lives cannot be entirely focused on their in-class education.

Profs that addressed student concerns (From Left: Daniel Vickers-Department Head; Glen Peterson; Coll Thrush; Arlene Sindelar)

Daniel Vickers is finishing as department head this year but I hope that his replacement will be equally as keen to encourage student participation in developing the structure of their education.

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This is just what I noticed so please feel free to post other things in the comments that you found particularly important from this years town hall!

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