Recently I had students in a class I’m teaching fill out some informal surveys about the course — what they’ve liked and not liked, what they found difficult or interesting, what they would change, how they would compare our class to others, etc. As I was reading through them I came across several things that I realized would ahve been great to know about a couple months ago, things that no one ever mentioned in class but were close to universally agreed upon.
I’m thinking that if I use a blog in the future I will try to include a component for general comment on the class, hopefully making anonymous comment possible, so that I don’t get to the end of the semester before finding out about details of how students are experiencing the class. It’s always a humbling reminder to discover things that, despite all your best intentions, you as a teacher had been blind to for three months, sometimes things that would have been really easy to address or adjust along the way. Even when as a teacher you try conscientiously to be attentive to what students are thinking a challenge remains because students are often to hesitant to say say something. I’m hoping maybe somehow a class blog could help to cultivate a more free-flowing exchange of ideas from the beginning of the semester.
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