Summary of mid-term feedback Some interesting comments from you. - PDF document

Summary of mid-term feedback Some interesting comments from you. Candy related comments: - "Thanks for all the great examples! They really help with understanding concepts. And thank you for snacks! :) But seems like we're on a chocolate famine lately?" - "Please bring more candy. My brain needs sugar." - "More candy! You can't just bring candy for the first few classes!" Crisis related comments: - "I am having a mid-life crisis!" Alice: Umm... If you are having a mid-life crisis, what kind of crisis would I be having? ... - "I am having an existential crisis." Other comments: - "Instructor Gao is very clear and thorough with her explanations of concepts and new topics. She is also a very helpful and friendly person." - "I feel like she actually cares about our learning and brings energy to every class." - "I am bored to tears in all my other classes, I don't even watch the clock in this class :)!!" Things that are working for you: Alice: Thank you for letting me know all the things that are working for you in this course. I appreciate the positive feedback, and I will keep doing the things that you enjoy. - Enthusiastic about the course. Engages a lot with audience. - Encourages questions. Thorough answers to questions. Gives candies to encourage class participation. Discussion with neighbours. - Thorough explanations for difficulty concepts. Explains concepts using simple terms that are easy to understand. - Working through examples on the projector during class. Writes down solutions for questions asked during class. - Clicker questions - Readings and pre-class quizzes before class. - Posting powerpoint slides and handwritten notes online - Exams are open book and has a group stage. Midterm handback with detailed rubric. Things that can be improved: - Could you post the pre-class quizzes without solutions for review? Alice: The PDFs of the pre-class quizzes without the solutions are posted on Connect. - Slides don't have clicker question answers. Alice: The answers to the clicker questions are either in the notes of the slide or on the next slide.

Alice: The answers to the clicker questions are either in the notes of the slide or on the next slide. - Please provide more explanations on the slides to give context for the slides when reviewing. Alice: I will do my best to make the slides as self-explanatory as possible. However, sometimes I intentionally leave things empty/vague so that we could discuss it during class. I expect you to take notes during class on anything on the slides that is not immediately clear to you. - Please remind us of quiz due dates at least 2 lectures before. Alice: I will do my best. As I've mentioned before, we are constantly adjusting quiz due dates based on our progress in lectures, so the due dates are not fixed in advance. - Lecture was slow and behind. We did not cover sufficient material before midterm one. Clicker questions take too long. Alice: Thank you for letting me know about the timing issue. I am aware of it. Partly this is due to the fact that I am constantly modifying and improving the slides, and therefore, I don't have the best grasp of the time required to cover new examples in the slides. I will be more vigilant about managing class time in the future, e.g. limiting clicker times. - Sometimes explanations are vague, confusing, or too technical. Alice: Having taught this class twice already, I have a sense of common misconceptions and always try to clarify these during class. Still, I encourage questions because I want to address any of your confusion as early as possible. Thus, please ask for clarification and ask me to explain something again if my explanation wasn't clear enough. - Too much time is spent on questions and not enough time is spent on going over the answers fully. Alice: I think answering questions is very important, particularly for addressing any confusion that I didn't manage to clarify. However, I will adjust the pace and reserve sufficient time to go over the answers. - Please defer irrelevant questions to office hours. Alice: Great suggestion! I'll try to do that. - When we are working through problems in class, please stop us in the middle and check our progress instead of letting us finish the problem first and then you go through the solution yourself. - Please take more notes on the projector, which forces us to take notes. Powerpoint doesn't force us to take notes. Alice: Thank you for these excellent suggestions! - Please relate the lectures to the readings more. Please spend more time covering concepts in class, and we can work on examples at home. Alice: I am happy to review materials from the readings, but I'd like to focus on clarifying difficult concepts and going through examples during lectures. - Ask us more review questions. Highlight important concepts more clearly. We need a summary of useful and common concepts (e.g. translating from logic to English).

- Ask us more review questions. Highlight important concepts more clearly. We need a summary of useful and common concepts (e.g. translating from logic to English). Alice: Excellent ideas! I will work them into my slides. - Please do more in-class proofs and clicker questions. Please show us more examples of varying difficulties. Please do exam-style problems in class. Alice: Covering more materials is difficult because we only have a fixed number of lecture hours. Also I believe the key to succeeding in this course is not doing as many practice problems as possible. Rather, you should focus on doing a small number of practice problems, but making sure that you thoroughly understand the solution to every practice problem.