Last Week Of Class Research Articles

The Long-Term Impact Of Women's Studies on Students' Personal Lives and Political Activism

Stake, Roades, Rose, Ellis, and West (1994) reported that women's studies classes led to more feminist activism and greater personal course-related changes than nonwomen's studies classes. The present study tested the durability of the positive changes observed in women studies students 9 months following the last week of class. Comparisons between students who participated at follow-up (26.3%) and students who did not participate indicated that the follow-up participants were representative of all students who completed the courses. In the follow-up sample, class impact reported in the last week of class was sustained at follow-up. Women's studies students continued to report substantial changes in their interactions with others and willingness to adopt new roles and behaviors. Ratings of positive effects were significantly higher than ratings of negative effects ( p < .0001). Students' responses indicated they were using their women's studies learning as a framework for understanding their experiences and making lifestyle changes.

A Real-World Project for a Desktop Publishing Course

College students who learn to use the tools of desktop publishing can put them to use in a variety of ways. They can create a professional-looking resume, a flier to advertise a meeting, or a poster to sell a car. A course in desktop publishing can certainly include assignments for documents like these, but instructors will probably want their students also to put their skills to use on projects that meet organizational needs. For several semesters at the institution where I teach desktop publishing, many of my students have fulfilled the requirement for an original major project by working with nonprofit and campus organizations to design brochures which fulfill important needs. In this article I mention the specific tools my students use, describe the brochure project, and offer some guidelines. The information should be useful for faculty just beginning to teach desktop publishing and for those with experience who have not yet dealt with this kind of project. TOOLS: SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE Without the proper tools, no one can produce the kinds of documents that meet the criteria for the project described here. State-of-the-art technology is not essential, but students do need hardware and software capable of creating and printing documents of high-quality appearance. These needs can be met with a good pagelayout program, a graphics program, personal computers adequate to run these programs, and a laser printer. An image scanner makes a valuable addition to this basic setup. My students, who work in a PC Ibm-compatible) environment, have the advantage of being able to learn and use two high-end packages, PageMaker and CorelDRAW, but less expensive layout and graphics programs will enable good results. Text for a document can be keyboarded directly in the layout program; for a project in which there is a great deal of text, it is good for students to have access to a word processor they already know how to use. Writing the text will go faster, and layout software can import word-processed files (though one should insure that the program being used does import files created in a particular word processor). For those who are using computers with the Microsoft Windows environment, one source for graphics work is the Paintbrush accessory program that is included with Windows. During the phase of the semester in which they are working on brochures, my students have some time during our three class periods a week to spend on their projects, but the majority of project time is spent in the Technology Center. There are 17 PCs in the center similar to those in the classroom, a number that is sufficient to handle the needs of my 35-40 students a semester (in two sections) as well as of other students who use the advanced applications available on these PCs. CLIENTS FOR THE PROJECT At the first meeting of the class each semester, I emphasize the original brochure project and encourage each student to think about an organization that might need such a document, as either a new creation or a makeover of an existing brochure. The students may work with a business or with a nonprofit entity, including a campus organization. I tell them that some potential clients will be contacting me, but that it's primarily their responsibility to find one. About once a week thereafter, I remind the students that they will need a client for the brochure. The project isn't due until the last week of class, but I make them aware that they'll need a good deal of time to work with a client to figure out what's needed for text and graphics, and more time working with the software to see which design options work and which do not. Finally, I warn that the client will always want changes after seeing the initial brochure design. My experience has been that about four out of five students will find brochure clients on their own. Some in the class belong to campus organizations that need a brochure; others ask around campus and discover needs - a department chair who wants to advertise next-semester electives, a professor who needs to promote a for-credit wintersession trip to Europe. …

Evaluating Student Evaluations: The Search for Perspective: Even Good Instructors Get Some Bad Marks

This class was an embarrassment to a fine journalism program.It happens at the end of every quarter or semester. The tests are over and the grades are turned in, but students are given one last shot. There's no appeal for instructors condemned by student evaluations.What educators receive on teaching evaluations is honest feeling--but not necessarily helpful feedback. Evaluations often do assist classroom teachers in determining trends and student perceptions. Insights can be gained, leading to improvements in the classroom game plan. But not all student comments are constructive, and not all are motivated by a desire to help improve teaching techniques. Some comments are downright rude.Dr. Washburn is the most uncaring, unfeeling teacher I've ever had. He grades unfairly, and he seems to enjoy giving out poor grades. He wrote unnecessary, sarcastic comments on my papers and he criticized students' mistakes in class.There's a problem with this opinion--it's probably inaccurate. Studentsnamed Ohio University's Patrick Washburn the Outstanding Graduate Faculty Member for the 1991-92 academic year.Other faculty received these stinging remarks:I think Professor Bugeja is too egotistical because he cuts off students and doesn't always listen. Instead everyone has to listen to him, as if he is too intelligent for us. hated this class. I don't think Mel Helitzer has a right to tell me what I can and can 't do (career advice)...I'm going to buy the ugliest dog I can find and I'm going to name him Melvin. Every time he barks I'm going to kick the s- out of him.These devastating words were not directed at insensitive instructors with little experience, or research-oriented grouches insulated by decades of tenure security. Nope. Both Michael Bugeja and Mel Helitzer are top teachers, chosen by undergraduates as among the best professors at Ohio University. For those who dread opening their evaluation packets, the irony is clear: Even the best teachers get bad evaluations.Candid interviews were conducted with journalism educators at Ohio University. Their comments are generalizable to every campus where evaluations are handed to students during the last week of classes. These thoughtful, sometimes emotional observations by classroom teachers are illustrative of concerns some educators will only discuss with a spouse or trusted colleague.Few articles have ever addressed this matter.' Yet a frank airing of emotions and beliefs may eliminate stress from post evaluation syndrome, which is evident among some new faculty members on almost every campus. True, some teachers may indeed be unprepared to teach and ambivalent toward students. They should cringe with guilt when bad evaluations arrive. But many others are trying hard to be great teachers. Negative, seemingly harassing comments on evaluations only confuse and exasperate them. Many, no doubt, feel alone and defeated.Attempting to understandI thought it was just me, said one assistant professor, still reeling from the emotional discovery that you can't please everyone. She teaches promotions and media research in another Ohio University department. haven't even looked at mine for two quarters. I have worked hard on my teaching. I don't want to abuse myself--I always feel bad for two days.There are many educators--especially in their first few years of teaching--who do not know how to accept rejection. It may be inherent in good teachers to want to reach every student--not just most of them. Arguably, some of those teachers who hate evaluations may be counted among the best educators. They care so much it hurts. But they do not feel like good teachers. They feel lousy.I can get ten good evaluations and one bad. Yet the bad one stays with me... I'm not sure why, confides one teacher, after completing his first year of instructing news editing. He equates the evaluation process to a refereed review of research submissions. …

Validity of Student Instructional Ratings

The final exam performances of seven sections of introductory calculus were compared with student ratings of the instructors. The ratings were made by a mail survey; half of the students were contacted during the last week of classes and the other half during the first week of the subsequent term. The ratings made at the two different times were not reliably different. Although both sets of ratings correlated positively with final exam performance, the ratings made during the first week of the subsequent quarter showed the stronger relationship. Additional analyses indicated that this positive relationship was not dependent on the student's individual grades.