Love that spirit of improvement. I tried it with my last class. I was struggling with anxiety in my class and I thought it went terribly. In the form, I asked what worked and what didn’t in addition to asking for a rating. I think the best compliment I got was that the environment was open in that the student felt comfortable asking questions. But I also got some useful feedback about being monotone. Definitely going to continue to seek feedback.
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Students feeling free to ask questions is a big positive. We are not perfect at planning and presenting classes. I see that the students have a responsibility to help us “keep on track.” If we omit or skip over something important, students should speak up and let us correct the issue while the group is together. If someone does not tolerate monotone, they should probably avoid my classes.
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The great teacher and physicist Richard Feynman said something along the lines of:
Everyone has models in their mind, so communicating is essentially translating from the model in one’s mind to a common language.
He also talked about how his teaching style is to explain the same thing several ways so as to cover as many of the different ways you can understand a concept as possible.
Here’s a great video of him explaining why “why questions” can be difficult to answer:
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All the above comments about the eval form are spot on.
I was in a class where most of the people (including myself) left before the class ended.
Saving the eval form for the end of the class would have missed all the people that left
early.
Feedback on why people are leaving in the middle of your class would be pretty useful to have.
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I haven’t used forms like that. I’d like to know how it goes - not the scores you get, per se, but the willingness for people to fill them out.
However, when I pilot a new class I devote 10 minutes at the end of the class to an open discussion about “Plus/Delta”. What are the good things that you wouldn’t want removed from a future offering of this class, and what should be changed to make it more useful/understandable?. One of those sessions resulted in me completely revamping the class - it was great feedback and it helped a lot. I found people willing to spend the time giving that feedback. By starting with the positives, they didn’t feel like they were attacking me by the time they got to the things that needed changing so the feedback was candid.
This isn’t helpful if it’s a class that will only be taught once but if it’s something that will be repeated I have found it to be useful.
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I consider the use of forms to be very successful. I told them that if they gave great comments but no suggestions it would make me feel good for a minute but would not help the next class. Four of six people responded to most questions.
http://www.pamplin.com/dms/eval_prog_101.docx
Most of my classes have minimal coverage on programming statements and have a number of exercises which involve plugging a sensor or servo into the breadboard, connecting it with a few jumpers, downloading a program and generally interacting with it. Interacting can be turning a pot, shading or shining a light into a sensor, changing delays or such in the program or moving something in front of the distance sensor.
This class had a stronger emphasis on a few programming commands and most examples involve running a program and seeing results on a serial monitor or serial plotter on the screen. I included several sensors in the parts kit but did not emphasize their use.
One person said he did not care for the “data processing” exercises so I pointed him to programs from another class and he wired up a light and temperature sensor and demoed it to a couple of others. I thought it was great. Two forms mentioned a desire for more circuits. My conclusion: “We are Makers!” Next time I will scale back on the presentation and bring it more in line with other classes with more lab time.
In previous classes I have tried your approach of getting suggestions in an open discussion. I’m not good at leading it and it seems to go flat after a minute or two.
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I was the “didn’t care about the data processing” guy LOL!
In this case, it was building a multiplication table and printing the exciting
table of numbers to the serial monitor.
And I had your demo bread board full of sensors on breakout boards just dying to be wired up
and interfaced with!
But to your credit, you were able to pivot back toward how I think you taught your earlier classes.
People in this discussion have probably taken your classes more than I did, so I won’t get crazy with the approbation.
Just looking forward to your next class…
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Sorry to hear that. I haven’t had that experience as a student. As an instructor, I’d want to know, although not everyone is up for saying that to a instructor.
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Now I’m looking forward to the Top 5 list. Please and thank you. 
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Great point about starting with a positive. I’m one of those that really really doesn’t like to fill out evaluations with multiple choice answers or 1-10 scales. If someone asks me in the terms you described, what’s good, what can be improved, I’d rather respond that way. Think the multiple choice and 1-10 answers lend themselves to handy data evaluation, but it’s not the way I want to provide information to an instructor.
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The format I’m using is:
Rate on a scale from 0 - 5
0: I learned nothing
3: I learned about as much as I expected.
5. I learned more than I expected. The class was excellent.
0 1 2 3 4 5
What went well?
What went badly?
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As a student, it’s very unlikely I’d answer a question put like that even if I had constructive criticism to offer.
I think another way that could be put, something more like:
“What’s an opportunity for improvement?”
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All of the 5 people who turned in the form responded to that question. 3 of the 5 were technical things (Xcode not being able to installed due to not having enough free space, for example), and 2 were things I could personally improve on. I think it’s all about the environment you create. My intention is to have people feel comfortable telling truths that need to be told and heard. Part of that is using no-nonsense language. When I passed the forms out, I specifically asked them to write down what went badly and what could go better.
As a new member (joined Sept 17) to DMS, I have to disagree with you. While I have been hesitant to say anything before, it is extremely frustrating being a new member. There are tools, which are the specific reason my wife and I joined, and we can’t use them because the classes fill up before we can register for them. In the almost 3 membership payments we’ve made, the value proposition of being a DMS member hasn’t been there because of the gate keeping to tools. If you’re going to put gate keeping in place, then you need to make meeting the requirement to get through those gates as painless as possible. Right now, lack of adequate classes is a problem. It wasn’t until October 29th that my wife and I were able to actually make anything at DMS. That’s not good. Until that moment, I was seriously salty about being a member of DMS and considering canceling my membership. I’m still not convinced it is worth it yet, because I still don’t think there has been enough value provided to justify the $225 we will have paid in 10 days to be a member for 3 months, but I sincerely want it to be. the Dynatorch gets 1 class a month that holds 4 students. I understand the logistics and limitations, but it is in demand and fills up immediately, and we can never get in. Ideally, based on that fact alone, there would be more classes to meet demand.
Coming from an education background (I used to teach digital forensics through the Department of States Anti Terrorism Assistance program as well as mobile device forensics as a Cellebrite instructor), I don’t understand the issues at play here that make classes such a hurdle, but regardless of the reasons it is extremely frustrating for those of us who are new. Why are more classes not done in an online video format with knowledge checking after the fact? Why are the hurdles keeping people from using the tools not being made navigable?
I’m never one to highlight problems without offering to help, but I fear the politics of this situation may be beyond me. Regardless, I offer to help in any way I can to fix the problem.
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I think that’s an excellent idea.
I’m not sure what we disagree on. I think the main issue is not enough student hours being taught. And I think DMS needs to make sure classes that are required to use equipment are accessible, which means having more of them.
Agreed. I’ve taken two instructor led classes at DMS. Both provided value because I had to take them to access a tool I am interested in. Neither was amazing. I value the instructors time and that they were willing to get me where I needed to be, but one class was erratic and took longer than it should have because it wasn’t logically laid out or presented. But at the end of the classes, I felt I had enough information to run the tool, and that’s all I really cared about.
Also, regarding feedback, it’s not in most people’s nature to provide positive feedback honestly. Look at yelp and other review sites: people tend to only provide feedback when they are unhappy. Additionally, when I was an instructor, my audience was mostly law enforcement and military. Many of my students did not want to be doing what they were doing. They would rather be busting bad guys on the street, not analyzing computers or mobile devices. And often that frustration got taken out on me. One time I had three officers from a police department in Kentucky that were taking my class. They were clearly not qualified to be there. But I came in early every day, stayed during lunches, and stayed late to help get them up to speed. On the last day, one of the officers filled out every white space on the front and back of the feedback form about what a terrible instructor I was. Thankfully I had one of our senior instructors evaluating me during that class, and the only negative marks he gave me was for spending too much time focusing on the needs of those three officers and letting it take away from the rest of the class. He also threw away the angry guy’s review, citing that there’s at least one in every class.
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The new member services coordinator wants to meet with all of the new chairs at some point to determine how many of our tools require training, etc. From there we can work with the education team to start creating online content. It isnt a fast or easy process but it is something we are working toward.
If anyone is interested in helping create online/video content please reach out to @dougemes or myself.
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If you haven’t already you might ping @AlexRhodes and @John_Marlow about their tool classification and training efforts. It’s good stuff.
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With classes at DMS, if someone doesn’t want to be there, they won’t.