Jordan- Reading Notes #5

With all the evaluations I've done over the years as a student, this will be the first time that the script is flipped and I'll be the one being evaluated. This is the first class, though, that I can remember taking where we had an evaluation during the term, and I did like that we went over those evaluations and tweaked the course here and there based on those evaluations. The Davis text states almost exactly what we did: early feedback can elicit the specific comments and constructive criticism you need to improve students' understanding of the material and their subsequent performance (pg 461). I would definitely need to feel completely comfortable with myself as a teacher and with my students to be able to do something like that during a course, primarily because I would feel too insecure about the feedback and always have it in the back of my mind, especially if I wasn't as connected with the students.

I also feel as though some students don't take evaluations seriously, especially younger ones because I know I didn't really put too much effort into them when I was younger. Looking at the different methods Davis presents, from the index cards to brief questionnaires in class and online, I always assume students don't want to do more work than they are asked. I think once students get into the routine of knowing they will be asked to give feedback and have taken a few classes, that this feedback is more useful than feedback from a class of all freshmen. I was wondering if those who have experience looking over evaluations if they have found that to be true (as well as our professor).

Davis makes a great comment by saying "Begin by looking at the positive comments your students have made. This is important because it is easy to be swayed by negative comments" (pg 467). I think this is true in a lot of aspects of life; we always dwell on that one negative comment out of a hundred. I think that Davis gives good tips on overcoming this, when she says to look for patterns with the comments (pg 467). I would definitely be more apt to changing the way I did things if I got seven or eight comments about the same thing, like that my power points were clear enough, than if one or two students in the class said they didn't understand something. I also tend to put more weight into my own judgments and critiques on myself and how I can improve than by what others say, but this will be a new arena for me.

I like the idea of recording classes, and it's something as a student at my old college where every class was video taped because we had one, two or three different campuses in different towns that the originating classroom on campus would beam out to. I've always been used to being video taped and shown on TV in that sense as a student, and I'm not sure if NDSU has that same kind of distance learning. With that being said, Davis suggests spending at least two hours analyzing a one-hour recording, as well as viewing the tape as soon as possible, and that is an area that I would feel a little uncomfortable with at first (pg 473). Maybe it's because I've never watched myself and then analyzed myself, but when I used to do sports radio podcasts back at my old college I would listen to those and analyze what I did well and what I need to improve. I think I would much rather have a colleague observe my class as Davis suggests on page 477. I can then get a somewhat unbiased feedback on what I did well and what I need to improve.

Multiple Choice Question:
What is the centrality measure that analyzes the number of ties a certain node has?
A: Closeness Centrality
B: Degree Centrality
C: Betweenness Centrality
D: All Of The Above
E: Both A and B