Selected student comments

Intro: a caution to students

Under the next few headings, I include direct quotes* from course evaluations I have received. But your experiences and learning needs can differ from these previous students: what one student loved, often another student abhorred, and students within the same course can have radically different opinions or interpretations of how a course went. Consider some quotes from a recent course:

• A few students wrote that my “lectures were fluid and well-organized” and students felt “immersed in the course context” even though another student felt that “lectures felt scripted rather than actual teaching, which made the content harder to understand.”
• One student had “never seen an instructor so in-tune with their class” while another student said that the “instructor was not very connected with the class.”
• Apparently the course had “too much information shared in each lecture” even though others found the content “very sparse.”
• And while one student found that “this is the most intellectually stimulated a course has ever made me feel,” another student said they “feel that we didn’t actually learn that much.”

The more critical comments are usually outliers in my reviews. Still, while there are many reasonable ways to “explain away” these outliers (I know from student disclosures that at least one of the above criticisms came from someone who never attended a single lecture!), and while there is a lot of evidence that course evaluations are biased and invalid measures of teaching effectiveness in general (they often correlate with students’ grades more than with coursewide learning outcomes!), there is always the possibility that you are among these outliers.

That is, it is always possible that you hate a course that other people love, that you love a teaching style that others hate, that you struggle in a course that others breeze through, that you knew a lot of the course content already, etc. And that’s okay! Not everyone’s learning needs, goals, or trajectories are the same. Not every instructor or course will be for you.

With this in mind, I encourage you to be very critical of all student evaluations of teaching, whether positive or negative, including the ones I share below and including the ones you write yourself! They are often student evaluations of their own specific learning experiences, rather than student evaluations of teaching generally, and not necessarily a reflection of how a course or instructor will work out for you.

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Superlatives:

Accessibility and Inclusion

The learning environment was so safe and welcoming, they are so helpful, they explain everything for us, they were able to keep us engaged and interested for 3–hour lectures which are not easy. (Topics in Bioethics, 2023)

To me, a student registered with accessibility services, they made me feel like my accommodations and wellbeing were prioritized over anything else. (Ethics and Mental Health, 2021)

Professor C cares about student mental health, provides content warnings for sensitive topics explored in class and clarifies challenging content in fabulous detail. They provide transcripts of each lecture and go above and beyond to make learning approachable. (Topics in Non-Western Philosophy, 2021)

C is an instructor that with the first lesson they ran, made me feel so welcome in the class. Their focus and priority on accessibility and inclusivity really reflect in their presentations as well as in the way they talk in lectures, something which I really appreciate. (Ethics: Death and Dying, 2021)

So far the best online course I have taken, in terms of how the material was presented and how accessible everything was. I think that C uses fully, the potentials online education can offer. (Ethics: Death and Dying, 2021)

Also used the opportunity to discuss a lot of very difficult (and emotional) topics – which can be tricky to do in most cases, but in general they approached the subject matter very carefully and knowledgeably with the understanding that others will have their own responses to it. (Ethics: Death and Dying, 2020)

C created a comfortable and open learning environment that allowed me to gain comfort in attending office hours on a consistent basis and speaking aloud in class for the first time. I think this is an important aspect of a course that should be taken into consideration more often. (Topics in Ethical Theory, 2019)

Instructor was always very approachable and open to discourse and helping. Instructor also displayed patience, understanding, and authenticity when offering assistance. (Topics in Ethical Theory, 2019)

The course instructor created an environment that was inclusive and conducive to learning, exhibited a great deal of enthusiasm regarding course content, and showed compassion and understanding for students by offering support and structuring assignments in such a way that allowed for a large degree of choice and engagement for students and allowed for success for people with different learning styles and challenges. (Ethics, 2018)

I was impressed by the care the instructor took in getting to know individual students, and their style of engagement with the class overall. We had skillfully facilitated class discussions and a few small–group discussions, which gave me (a fairly shy student) more opportunities to participate. We had very stimulating discussions and it felt like everyone in the class could contribute something, or help shape the conversation. This Instructor’s approach is something I have rarely seen at U of T and I would like to see more of this (Ethics, 2018)

I was very grateful that I could access the material online and participate in a way that balanced both my health and my learning. I found that overall I was able to participate more fully in this course than I have in past courses without compromising my well–being (Ethics, 2018)

Extensions were available within reason if requested by email, and the course instructor was open to input on the improvement of accessibility (Ethics, 2018)

Course Design and Learning Outcomes

The assignments and engagement had very descriptive and specific outlines on what is expected so that there was a maximum chance for student to achieve their best. (Ethics: Death and Dying, 2023).

The instructor clearly tailored the class (e.g. lectures, assignments) to support students in both their performance in the class, as well as becoming more comfortable within the field of bioethics (Ethics: Death and Dying, 2023)

C teaches in a manner that is both supportive and engaging, tailoring their content to accommodate student interest, latest developments in the field, and the cross–disciplinary training requisite for future success. One of the most thoughtful and compelling instructors I’ve ever had. (Ethics: Death and Dying, 2023)

I am sad that I only met C in my final year at UofT, for the skills they taught me would have helped make me get a lot more out of my undergraduate journey. Nonetheless, having taken several courses with C, where they gave us (students) the opportunity to engage in independent and collaborative learning, grad school seems a bit less scary. I owe most of my personal and academic growth in the past year to C; anyone would be lucky to learn from them. (Seminar in Applied Ethics, 2022)

There is a significant gap between most instructors’ expectations from students and the support available to us. It did not occur to me until taking a course with C that I have never received any writing support. To elaborate, I am in my fourth year, and I have been writing argumentative essays for years. While my grades have often been in the A range, feedback only focused on content, so I assumed my writing was good. I identified more areas of improvement in my writing practices from C’s workshops than any feedback I have received on papers. (Ethics and Mental Health, 2021)

Professor C’s weekly learning reflections not only gave us an opportunity to illustrate not only what we have learned in the course but also what we didn’t understand and the steps we would take to improve our approach to learning and application. Professor C is very transparent about their grading scheme and approach on monitoring student performance. (Topics in Non-Western Philosophy, 2021)

They taught us how to apply what we learn in class to our daily lives. (Topics in Non-Western Philosophy, 2021)

C handled tough subject matter with great efficiency and I found class to be very informative! Taking this course during the COVID–19 pandemic has taught me how nuanced bioethics is and has opened my mind up to a whole new outlook on life + medicine. Grateful for this opportunity! (Ethics: Death and Dying, 2020)

The readings were engaging and the assignments were fair and made one engage with the class material. It was well organized and provided many opportunities to get the most out of this course. (Ethics, 2018)

This course was very accessible, intellectually stimulating, and modern. The instructor presented relevant and real–time information to make the old ethical theories more relatable and practical (Ethics, 2018)

The instructor is a very engaging lecturer who picked learning material carefully to ensure we got a well–rounded view of the concepts we were exploring. I signed up for this course without any preconceptions or expectations of material and was very impressed both with the topic and the readings list (Ethics, 2018)

C. did an incredible job of putting different philosophical texts/thinkers in conversation with each other. They allowed our class to look at an exciting topic – bodies – through a new and critical lens. (Ethics, 2018)

Each lecture proved to clarify and enhance understanding of the assigned readings and ideas (Ethics, 2018)

Instructor was very engaged with us and invested in our learning outcomes. (Introduction to Philosophy, 2018)

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*Notes: All comments that appear here have been selected from anonymous student evaluations conducted by the University of Toronto, and are ordered by recency. They have been edited only to correct my name or pronouns. Requests for more complete evaluations can be sent by email.