Teaching Evaluations

TA: Alessandra York

Genetics 466: General Genetics
Discussion sections
Fall 2014

Summary of quantitative data

Scale= 1 to 5 with 5 as the highest.

1. Content of presentation was relevant and important 4.15

2. Content of presentation did not repeat materials covered in other courses 3.54
3. Instructor/TA was prepared 4.31
4. Instructor/TA was organized 4.33
5. Instructor/TA was enthusiastic and interested 4.08
6. Instructor/TA was effective in presentation 3.85
7. Instructor/TA was available for consultation 4.38
8. Instructor/TA was helpful in consultation 4.31
9. Instructor/TA made effective use of audiovisuals and/or handouts 3.77
10. How would you grade the professor? (GPA scale out of 4.0) 3.50

Summary of selected comments (originals available upon request)

 Ali was very helpful in discussion. She was very open to all questions and answered
them effectively. You could tell she was enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the
material, and I enjoyed having her as my TA.
 Ali was very approachable and that was her greatest characteristic.
 She was great with calculations.
 It was really nice to have both an overview of lecture material and worked-out
problems.
 I enjoyed the slides. They were a good summary of lecture.

Summary of selected suggestions to improve (originals available upon request)

 Be confident! You know the material, you can do it!
 I think going through dailys [a sheet given each lesson with the learning objectives
for the lesson, vocab to know and practice problems] would be best in discussion
since the work for the problems is not provided on answer sheet.
 I didn’t think it was very useful to do book problems in discussion since the solution
manual has answers.
 Sometimes made mistake on problems and didn’t catch till later.

Most of my critical feedback focused on either the content of my discussion sections or

my confidence. Students seemed to have a range of opinions on what should be covered,
where some liked (and very much needed) me to discuss what we covered in lecture, whereas
others wanted it to be specific types of problems (seen above). I tried to pick problems that
either a) I knew instructors would cover a similar type on the exam or b) ones I continuously got
questions about. The other more critical comments I got were focused on confidence, where on
occasion I would mess up a problem or explaining a concept. As a second-year graduate
student, one is not always confident in their ability to stand up and lecture in front of a large
group of people. This is something that I have worked on over time in graduate school and feel
much stronger at now.