I reviewed the results of the Fall 2014 Student Questionnaire with some trepidation (list of questions, numerical data, and narrative comments). First, I’ve gone “all-in” with Canvas this year, and I know how students (and faculty) react to new things[1]. Second, “homeless,” without an office, I have been (a) hard for students to find for office hours, and (b) feeling scattered and lost. Third, even after 17-years of teaching, I don’t think I’m a very good teacher — I know what really good teaching looks like, and it’s not what my AP Psych class is like.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have felt nervous as both the class observations from our Principal and the peer-observations from my colleagues have been positive. Granted, comments like this from our Principal don’t actually reference my instructional practices: “Thanks for continuing to transform lives through your work in the classroom.”

Looking at the numerical data for the Fall 2014 student questionnaire, I notice that the average has increased from a 5.69 in Fall 2013 to a 5.73 this academic year; student ratings increased on 11 of 19 indicators. The largest increase (5.53 to 5.70) was surprisingly on Q9: “The teacher uses a variety of activities (discussion, group work, lecture, labs, technology, etc) during class time.” Personally, I think this is one of my greatest weaknesses as a teacher, at least in regards to my AP Psychology class; unlike my lower-division History classes, Psych is largely lecture-based. We do do quite a few demonstrations, and so that may be what students are referring to. The question with the greatest year-to-year drop (5.84 last year to 5.68 this) was Q6: “The teacher explains the material clearly and in ways that are easy to understand, offers alternative explanations or additional examples, and clears up confusion.” I don’t actually think that I’ve decreased the number of alternate explanations or examples from last year (frankly, this is one of the advantages of being a veteran teacher: we naturally accumulate additional explanatory strategies), nor was this actually my lowest score this year, and so I’ll let this drop in score slide as an anomoly.

In regards to the highest and lowest responses from students, let’s start with the good news. Q10 was my highest score (5.89): “The teacher knows the subject area very well.” To the degree this is true, it’s a credit to my involvement with the #psychat community on Twitter and my robust collection of RSS feeds; both allow me to read a vast amount of studies coming out of the field on a weekly basis. It’s a matter of pride that I actively keep abreast of changes in the psychological sciences — at least to the degree necessary for teaching a college-level introductory course. Q5 was my lowest score this year (5.51): “What we do in this class (homework and classwork) helps me learn the subject matter.” I think there are two explanations for this question being my lowest performing area. First, as I mentioned above, class is largely lecture-based, and that sort of passive learning environment is simply not the best for true, deep learning. It’s efficient, but not as effective as other instructional methodologies[2]. Second, the tests for the class are hard. Students are expected to learn a vast amount of material and be able to use that knowledge to answer questions on a test. It is an Advanced Placement course; it is analogous to Introduction to Psychology courses in colleges across the country; it is hard. I try to make learning as easy – and fun – as possible, but learning is and always will be hard work.

Looking at the written comments, there are few changes from previous years. Most of the comments reference: class being “engaging and fun”, how students appreciate bing treated “like we are in college, and gives us more freedom”, and how “the test are really really hard.” Only two comments specifically referenced Canvas: “I hate the tests on Canvas. Things always glitch.” and “I like how Mr Castro is very organized on Canvas. It makes it a lot easier to organize my work.” Unfortunately none of the comments had any actionable suggestions for improving the class. I’ll have to specifically collect those on my own after the AP test in May.

And so although I read the Student Questionnaire results with some unease, they were quite positive. I wish they were a bit more helpful though.