Module evaluation

With the exams over it is time to ask the students what they thought of our modules. The results tend to be a blend of disheartening and uplifting. There are always those who love it and those who don't! But it's pretty much our task to look past the noise of personal preference (and the odd unfounded opinion; sometimes you get students complaining about the absence of something that was actually provided but which they didn't notice) and get to the stuff that indeed we should change.

I looked at the modules I was involved in, mainly at the ones I lead. The one I did for the first time was not as popular as the other one! But that's to be expected. Practice makes perfect, and I hadn't had practice with this one. Furthermore, in the end I struggled to return marking on time and that's a sure way to piss students off. And some of the deadlines were a bit close to deadlines of other modules. But then there were things I didn't know in advance what they would think. Mainly: the group presentations! Which were new.

One students just didn't like group presentations. One student thought it wasn't a good idea to include the presentation topics in the exam. But apart from that, people were enthusiastic! Good! So that can stay. You can't please everyone so the odd student in every cohort who doesn't like group presentations will have to live with this. I'm sure such things occur in working life as well! If both the majority of the students think it's a good idea and I think so too it's a stayer.

For the glaciology module, the strangest thing was that nobody, literally nobody had given us feedback on the online test, which was new. Oh well! We'll just have to do what we think is right.
But some students had some additional points I hadn't thought of, so I can work with these. There's always toom for improvement!