Course Evaluations

It is nearly that time again. A message from SOI:

SOI course evaluations will be conducted for eligible Summer I session courses from June 22 - 28, 2011. Please ask your students to watch their student email account for an invitation message with complete instructions on Wednesday. Please encourage them to complete the surveys during the data collection period.

I do take evaluations seriously and try to use the feedback you provide to make things better the next time around. Completing the evaluation shouldn't take much time. Particularly since this is my first time teaching PH101, I'd appreciate the feedback - good or bad, both are useful.

I guess more to the point: my department chair and dean look at these things very carefully. I can't see them until well after final grades are submitted, and the evaluations are completely anonymous. So, whether you think good or ill of the course, you should do the evaluation and not hold back. The evaluations are one particular bit of student feedback that receives very close attention. These days, you can actually add comments on top of the numerical rankings, all the better for you to voice your opinions.

No need to do it right now - study for your exam, you have about a week, maybe this weekend you could spend 5 min on it ... but you're not wasting your time in filling out the form.

Grade revisions

I've posted the lab 5 (work-energy) grades on MasteringPhysics now, as well as changes to some earlier lab grades for those of you who asked me to have a look. Please have a careful look - be sure that your lab grade matches the one written on the report you got back, and that your grade is the same as your group mates'. Same goes for the exam grades, do check that everything seems to be correct.*

The scores from today's problem solving competition should be ready tomorrow (Thurs), and I'll post the scores by team number here for the curious. It was a bit more chaotic and slower than I had imagined (as always), but I liked that you were engaged and putting in a good effort. You can leave (anonymous) comments here if you have thoughts on the competition, particularly how to improve it or if you'd want to do it again (modulo improvements).

* I try to be very obsessive and careful, but already at this point there are 340 lab grades alone to manually enter, and typos happen. This is something you should do in all your classes, in my opinion - anyone can make a mistake, now and again, so you should keep track of your own grades as best you can to make sure nothing seems off. There is absolutely nothing wrong with asking a professor to explain their grading calculation, that level of transparency should be considered mandatory. I don't mind at all if you question my numbers, and will happily explain them, I don't want them incorrect any more than you do.**

** If you notice an error in your favor, it is your call to mention it or not. I consider it your lucky day, and a lesson that I should be more careful. I don't expect you to bring it up, and don't fault you for taking the 'bonus.' If your conscience is eating away at you, however, then by all means let me know ...***

*** As we're on the subject of grading: I will add a column to MasteringPhysics shortly listing your overall course grade. You can ask/email me at any point for a grade update, I have them already calculated at any given moment.

Don't freak out yet, it's still early ...

Some of you have been asking about how to get a little more help. Here's what I wrote to one of you, with some suggestions: