As regular readers know, each year I have each of my classes evaluate the class and me, and share the results with my colleagues and on this blog — warts and all. By sharing the results, I find that I can get valuable feedback from others. In addition, since students know that I let other people know the results, I think they tend to take it a bit more seriously.

I’ve collected all my related posts at My Best Posts On Students Evaluating Classes (And Teachers).

I’ve been meaning to post the evaluation results from my International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge class, but just haven’t gotten around to it. Since the next school year is just around the corner, I figured it was time to make the time.

I love teaching this class!

In my other classes, I provide more of a survey form with multiple choice answers (along with space where students can write their own). With my TOK class, I prepared a sheet with five questions that they could answer in narrative form. I have uploaded the form here.

Here are the questions, along with some sample answers (in italics), along with a short commentary written by me:

1) What are the two or three most important things you learned in this class?

Don’t do things just because you are told to do them.

The elements of a good presentation

How to question information that is give to us by experts.

Not all truth is the truth.

To think critically.

The value of questioning paradigms.

That it’s important to distinguish causation from correlation.

How I can approach problems in many ways.

How I can dig deep into knowledge.

MY COMMENT: It seems to me that students generally learned what I had hoped they would learn.

2) What did you like about this class or how it was taught?

I liked that we were made to think a lot about many issues concerning the world.

The teacher was easy to communicate with.

I liked that the examples we studies were real life examples from around the world.

I liked that, instead of lecturing, the teacher had us give small groups presentations about lots of the topics.

I liked the relaxed atmosphere.

I liked that we had a class website with all the resources.

I liked how the teacher was gangsta.

The way it was taught wasn’t really helpful, it doesn’t remain in my mind.

MY COMMENT: With one exception, it seems that I was successful in making the class relevant and engaging.

3) How do you think this class could be improved?

The class was perfect.

Don’t waste a lot of paper.

Use less paper — be eco friendly! (many students wrote this)

We should work on the TOK essay and presentation earlier (several wrote this).

MY COMMENT: The comments on working on the TOK essay and presentation earlier were well-founded.  This was the first year I was teaching the class, and my timing certainly could have been better.  I’m just not sure what I can do about the paper, though.  We have a TOK textbook, but only portions of it are useful, and I supplement it a lot with outside materials.  We don’t have laptop program at our school, so we can’t go “paperless.”  If readers have ideas, please leave them in the comments section.

4) What grade would you give Mr. Ferlazzo as a teacher? What do you think he does well? What do you think he could improve?

A+, but he needs to be more strict on due dates.

B+, he needs to improve his understanding of the subject more and stop killing trees.

A, he explains and teaches well.

A, he could improve on his organization, though.

A, but he needs to not extend due dates because it makes the students lazy (several students commented on this)

A, because he gives us candy

A+,  because he does well in teaching things easily and understandably

MY COMMENT: I was struck by how many students actually complained about my being flexible about due dates.  Since this was the first time I was teaching the class, I wasn’t quite sure how long projects would take.  I also wanted to show understanding of the tremendous workload IB diploma candidates have in their other classes.  I’d be interested in hearing reader comments on this.

5) Are there ways you think that what you learned in this class will help you in the future? If so, what are they?

Speaking up

Yes, don’t always believe say and everything is not always the way it seems.

Yes! How to think logically and it will help me think about things.  It will help me through debates and lectures.

Yes, the skill to see past the truth.

Question things.

How to write an essay and elements of a good presentation.

Yes, we learned how to look at things from different perspectives.

I learned ho to think differently to solve my problems.

MY COMMENT: I’m pleased with the responses.

All in all, it was a great class, and I can hardly wait to teach it again in the coming year!