Fall 2000 Evaluations for MA 107 online

MA 107 online class
Student Evaluations -- Fall 2000

MA 107 Section 016 was an online course in Fall 2000. Since the class does not meet, distribution of the course evaluation form normally used in the math department was not feasible. (Many questions on that form are not applicable to an online section anyway because they pertain to classroom activities.)

Consequently, I posted an anonymous online evaluation form and requested students to submit it. The link to the online evaluation form was embedded in a WebAssignment which was accessible only to students in the class. Students were given 3 home work points credit for clicking a button in the WebAssignment stating that they had completed the evaluation form, but they were informed that the contents of the form itself would be sent anonymously via e-mail.

The following responses were all the responses received, and they are listed below in the order in which they were submitted during the period Dec. 1-11, 2000. The top row shows the five questions, and each subsequent row gives the response of a single student.

-- Prof. Lavon B. Page
--January 11, 2001

MA 107 -- Fall 2000 Evaluations

Evaluate the overall content of this course. Was the grading fair and was the amount of work expected reasonable? Evaluate the overall quality of the online materials (movies, WebAssignments, tutorials) used in the course. What is your opinion regarding the use of WebAssign for the in-class testing and final exam? Would you recommend the online section to a friend? Why or why not? Please share any suggestions you may have with regard to possible improvements in the course.

This course has been very effective in providing an understanding of the concepts laid out in the curriculm. The grading and work expected was very reasonable. Thier was enough work to provide an understanding of the material and it was challenging. The quick time movies, slides, and webassign were all good quality. They were laid out in an effective manner as to be understandable. The process for which we take exams using webassign is very effective. It provides an opportunity to better understand the material. My being able to submit more than once, it is a more effective way of learning to see your mistakes and change careless errors. Webassign is also an excellent way to test due to the accesibilty and user friendly characteristics. I would definetly reccommend the online section to a friend. It is an excellent course that provides a good background for future math's. It also is convenient. It fits your schedule, and you are able to repeat any of the lectures several times if needed and look over the notes online. Thier should be more online courses similar to this one. I noticed several times some of the material on webassign was not discussed thourghly enough in the lectures and notes.

this course was very fair, and the amount of work, and time spent going over the notes was reasonable for the credit hours earned. they were very good it was the best thing abuot the course because it was easy to see your grade right at the moment the test was over yes, it is convient and not to hard. i really think this class is well done

Yes Very useful I like the use of webassign. It eliminaes the excure/burden of simple errors mad ein haste and measures the true knowledge and command the student has of the subject. Yes. No regular class meetings and yet there is enough info available to learn the stuff. i like it

The course was very fair. The work was fair. We had enough time to complete assignments and the assignments were fair. The quality was pretty good. I think the movies could use more examples. I personally liked using webassign. yes, i would. b/c you can work at your own pace. the TA was willing to help. other than more examples on the movies, everything was fine. jennifer was nice and helpful.

I think the content of this course was appropriate and the work load was fair - except for an assignment due on Thanksgiving - there was a homework or two for every subject we covered and the tests were spaced out properly. The movies were good, helpful, but I wish they had correlated more with the homeworks - when I was doing my homeworks, or workbooks, i would go back to the tutorials to help and I couldnt find a similar problem, for people who are extremely bad at math, this was a problem. I also wish there had been notes to go along with the movies, or an outline of the topic I love using webassign - it's quick, easy, easily accessible, and there's no room for disagreement on whether a problem is right or wrong based on how it was solved, a problem in other math courses Yes, it is better than having a math lab with the class, you can do it at your own pace and you dont have to sit in front of some boring teacher and watch a chalkboard for an hour and half. I pretty much covered my suggestions above - printable notes to go along with the movies, the movies having problems that better correlate with the homeworks, no homeworks due on major national holidays!!!

the work was reasonable, but thursday night due dates are odd. they should have been sunday night, so students could work on them over the weekend. the pdf notes were sometimes sideways! i couldn't read them to save my life! i don't generally print out my notes, so i had to look at the monitor sideways. tutorials were overall very nice. i like webassign. some of the questions were hard though, so the only downside i see is that it doesn't give partial credit! i would if I knew the friend was not a slacker who doesn't like to study. people who take this course are forced to pace themselves due to no formal class meetings, and some people just can't do that. please just put all the notes upright, and not sideways!

Yes, I enjoyed the course in its entirety. I was very pleased with the use of technology. I loved it. Hell yeah I would. I found this to be a great way to learn math in new way, without the boring traditionalist approach. It allowed me time to evaluate the assignments when I free time, which made it much less hectic. The course is great! Make more Online courses!

Content was understandable and grading was very fair. Work was thought-provoking and amount was reasonable given the expectations and objectives of the course. EXCELLENT! The movies were quite understandable and extremely well put together. Webassign was great for both the homework and the exams. I think it was great. Beside the fact that we get our grades right away, the immediate feedback of answers was very helpful. Depends. The online courses definitely require a great deal of self-motivation. However I think it was a great way to take a course. I didn't utilize too much help from Dr. Page or Jennifer, but asking questions online is a little difficult. Since I happen to enjoy math, figuring things out by myself was part of my learning, and I didn't mind it. I can't think of any right now. I thought it was great.

yes, it was quite fair. movies could have been better it is excellent most definantly make online explanations of material better

Yes. The grading was extremely fair and the amount of work was very fair, especially the unlimited submissions. I thought the quality was very good. The movies were clear and easy to understand. Some of the WebAssignments gave me a little trouble, especially when the movie didn't have an example that didn't go directly with the problem, but most times, I was able to figure them out. I really liked the usage of WebAssign for the in-class testing. It made me feel a lot more comfortable and let me set my own pace. Yes, because it has really helped my math skills and has not been too stressful. One time, I sent in a question requesting help and I sent it through WebAssign. I never got an answer, but the time I emailed Jennifer, I got an answer. Maybe everyone should just email Jennifer, since she is so on the ball:)

The grading was extremely fair. I found that the amount of work was perfect. Overall the materials were concise and easy to follow. The only section that I thought could have used a little more explanation were the sections on logarithms. As a regular distance learning student, these materials were by far the easiest to follow. After using the Webassign pages all semester it was very helpful to be able to take the exams in the same format. I found that my level of retention was high, and the formats of the exams where conducive to excellent recall of the information we've studied. Of course I would. I found the explanations of concepts to be exceptional and the assistance that Jennifer provided could not be matched. Any student that is working full time or has other full time obligations other than school, could not go wrong with this course, and this team of instructors. No real improvements, just the section on logarithms was a little difficult to follow

I think that the grading and amount of work was reasonable. I like the webassigments, but I wish that for notes, there was maybe online notes instead of just movies and tutorials. I think it's a great idea .Definitely, it saves you time so that you don't have to go to class, yet you learn a lot in the process.

Absolutely, I never felt too much pressure or as though I didn't have enough time to complete assignments Excellent, I was extremely prepared by the workbook excercises as well as the endless submissions allowed for webassignments. I think it allowed my to better understand my mistakes immediately instead of getting a test back days later and never trying the problems I got wrong again to see if I could get them right. 9 times out of ten, I got problems wrong because of silly mistakes and after taking the test, I could go back and never make those mistakes again Yes, The flexability as well as the quality of the learning was superior than I have recieved in a classroom based mathmatics course. It's a lot more self-motivated and thus better prepares you for other classes with a similar style of learning. Maybe a frequently asked questions area, especially concerning some math problems. Also, there were times when the examples presented in the tutorials were on a much simpler level than the webassign, and so I had difficulty with several problems which, although I knew the general method, became difficult when you add extra difficulty to the problems. (I remember a couple of Quadratic formula problems where this occured)

The grading was very fair, the webassigns gave me the opportunity to make sure that I got all of the points that I needed tog et to make a good grade. The online materials were great. It kept me from buying a book that cost too much and let me look at the materials word for word as they were being taught. The use of the work helped in situations that I was not totally sure on how to do, so I tried several ways, along with the way that was taught and found out which way helped me the most, which cut down on how much time I spent on test taking. YES, the teacher was great, the course was very laid put and to the point, and there seemed to be a lot of help if there was the need for it. Even though we are in college and supposed to be adults, we all need a little help sometimes, and the help was always available. There will never be another teacher recommended like this one. He needs to teach everything at the university. There is not much to improve on, maybe some group work within the class to get to know some people so that there can be some group studying, but other than that, the class was great.

I felt that this course was extremly well put together. No holes or inconsitancies. The same goes for the online materials. Very well put together. Using both movies and pdf's account for different computing enviornments. Webassign works by giving immediate feedback and practice. To be honest, I love it because it gives me chances to correct any careless errors that I might have made. Yes. It is a good refresher course that is not demanding on a students schedule. Possibly offer the movies in a different format. As a linux user, it takes some work to get a program installed and configured that can play back quick time. Mpegs and Real Audio/video formats would be better.

Grading was fair and amount of fwoek was reasonable. Having a deadline, with easy (online) access to both the problems and the tools neccessary to complete the problems, make it almost impossible to not complete the assignments. To view the the mavies, you must have a reasonably up to date computer. That's one drawback. However, the pdf. formats are also informative. Easy for both the student and teacher however you must be very familiar with the rules and parameters of entering the correct answers. ie. 2**.5 , or sqrt(2), or sqrt2, or even 2^.5 I believe was excepted once. This can cause problems when a student has the correct answer but phrases it wrong. Yes. I would recommend it to people who do not have the schedule permitting class attendance, or georaphic location not allowing participation otherwise. More available TA or professor help.

Yes. The grading was extremely fair. The amount of work was totally reasonable. The WebAssignments and tutorials were very helpful. I give them a 9 out of 10. I really liked the use of WebAssign for the in-class testing. It allowed me to feel like I did not have to stress out about the exams. Yes, because it was very helpful, and the notes that Dr. Page gave out through the internet were thorough. The Monday assignments did sort of stress me out because they were given during exam week.

yes the course was fair. It just was a lot for me with taking 19 hours. It was hard to make sure I had time for the clas. The online couse material was vey helpful, but there were still times when I needed to seek outside help. I think coming to take the test in class is very important. Yes as long as they made time in their weekly schedule for the classwork. I would suggest a net forum type site. So they if one student had a problem there may be more than one person with the same problem and it could make everyones life a little easier.

Yes on both counts. Most of the materials in the course were very well done. The log section was very scant in terms of the movies. Some was intuitive, but the assignments and test questions were not easily determined (e.g., where do e^8 and 2e^6 cross?) just by virtue of the PDF and movie files. I would have preferred to spend more time on logs so as to better understand their utility. It's an effective way to test what we really know as opposed to trying to sift through our work and find out where we made a mistake to give partial credit. This way we can do that ourselves, get full credit, and demonstrate that we know the material enough to correct mistakes. Yes. It's a perfect way to take courses with limited time. I would have liked to have more "real world" examples to see the problems work out. I guess I like to learn backwards, rather than learning the concepts first and then apply them to a problem, I like to have the problen and then determine the concepts to apply.

very completely adequate its the single best method of learning i have encountered yes because of #3 some more required gatherings in class... once a month type of thing for just a general.. "is everyone ok" type of thing

The grading was very fair. The amount of work was also very reasonable. I really appreciate the examples that were given in the movies. The examples really helped with the webassign and the tests. I like the fact that we are allowed the use the webassign for the in class testing and the final exam. I would recommend the class, because it allows the student to read the information and to turn the work in early with the webassign.

MA 107 -- Fall 2000 Evaluations
Evaluate the overall content of this course. Was the grading fair and was the amount of work expected reasonable?	Evaluate the overall quality of the online materials (movies, WebAssignments, tutorials) used in the course.	What is your opinion regarding the use of WebAssign for the in-class testing and final exam?	Would you recommend the online section to a friend? Why or why not?	Please share any suggestions you may have with regard to possible improvements in the course.
This course has been very effective in providing an understanding of the concepts laid out in the curriculm. The grading and work expected was very reasonable. Thier was enough work to provide an understanding of the material and it was challenging.	The quick time movies, slides, and webassign were all good quality. They were laid out in an effective manner as to be understandable.	The process for which we take exams using webassign is very effective. It provides an opportunity to better understand the material. My being able to submit more than once, it is a more effective way of learning to see your mistakes and change careless errors. Webassign is also an excellent way to test due to the accesibilty and user friendly characteristics.	I would definetly reccommend the online section to a friend. It is an excellent course that provides a good background for future math's. It also is convenient. It fits your schedule, and you are able to repeat any of the lectures several times if needed and look over the notes online. Thier should be more online courses similar to this one.	I noticed several times some of the material on webassign was not discussed thourghly enough in the lectures and notes.
this course was very fair, and the amount of work, and time spent going over the notes was reasonable for the credit hours earned.	they were very good	it was the best thing abuot the course because it was easy to see your grade right at the moment the test was over	yes, it is convient and not to hard.	i really think this class is well done
Yes	Very useful	I like the use of webassign. It eliminaes the excure/burden of simple errors mad ein haste and measures the true knowledge and command the student has of the subject.	Yes. No regular class meetings and yet there is enough info available to learn the stuff.	i like it
The course was very fair. The work was fair. We had enough time to complete assignments and the assignments were fair.	The quality was pretty good. I think the movies could use more examples.	I personally liked using webassign.	yes, i would. b/c you can work at your own pace. the TA was willing to help.	other than more examples on the movies, everything was fine. jennifer was nice and helpful.
I think the content of this course was appropriate and the work load was fair - except for an assignment due on Thanksgiving - there was a homework or two for every subject we covered and the tests were spaced out properly.	The movies were good, helpful, but I wish they had correlated more with the homeworks - when I was doing my homeworks, or workbooks, i would go back to the tutorials to help and I couldnt find a similar problem, for people who are extremely bad at math, this was a problem. I also wish there had been notes to go along with the movies, or an outline of the topic	I love using webassign - it's quick, easy, easily accessible, and there's no room for disagreement on whether a problem is right or wrong based on how it was solved, a problem in other math courses	Yes, it is better than having a math lab with the class, you can do it at your own pace and you dont have to sit in front of some boring teacher and watch a chalkboard for an hour and half.	I pretty much covered my suggestions above - printable notes to go along with the movies, the movies having problems that better correlate with the homeworks, no homeworks due on major national holidays!!!
the work was reasonable, but thursday night due dates are odd. they should have been sunday night, so students could work on them over the weekend.	the pdf notes were sometimes sideways! i couldn't read them to save my life! i don't generally print out my notes, so i had to look at the monitor sideways. tutorials were overall very nice.	i like webassign. some of the questions were hard though, so the only downside i see is that it doesn't give partial credit!	i would if I knew the friend was not a slacker who doesn't like to study. people who take this course are forced to pace themselves due to no formal class meetings, and some people just can't do that.	please just put all the notes upright, and not sideways!
Yes, I enjoyed the course in its entirety.	I was very pleased with the use of technology.	I loved it.	Hell yeah I would. I found this to be a great way to learn math in new way, without the boring traditionalist approach. It allowed me time to evaluate the assignments when I free time, which made it much less hectic.	The course is great! Make more Online courses!
Content was understandable and grading was very fair. Work was thought-provoking and amount was reasonable given the expectations and objectives of the course.	EXCELLENT! The movies were quite understandable and extremely well put together. Webassign was great for both the homework and the exams.	I think it was great. Beside the fact that we get our grades right away, the immediate feedback of answers was very helpful.	Depends. The online courses definitely require a great deal of self-motivation. However I think it was a great way to take a course. I didn't utilize too much help from Dr. Page or Jennifer, but asking questions online is a little difficult. Since I happen to enjoy math, figuring things out by myself was part of my learning, and I didn't mind it.	I can't think of any right now. I thought it was great.
yes, it was quite fair.	movies could have been better	it is excellent	most definantly	make online explanations of material better
Yes. The grading was extremely fair and the amount of work was very fair, especially the unlimited submissions.	I thought the quality was very good. The movies were clear and easy to understand. Some of the WebAssignments gave me a little trouble, especially when the movie didn't have an example that didn't go directly with the problem, but most times, I was able to figure them out.	I really liked the usage of WebAssign for the in-class testing. It made me feel a lot more comfortable and let me set my own pace.	Yes, because it has really helped my math skills and has not been too stressful.	One time, I sent in a question requesting help and I sent it through WebAssign. I never got an answer, but the time I emailed Jennifer, I got an answer. Maybe everyone should just email Jennifer, since she is so on the ball:)
The grading was extremely fair. I found that the amount of work was perfect.	Overall the materials were concise and easy to follow. The only section that I thought could have used a little more explanation were the sections on logarithms. As a regular distance learning student, these materials were by far the easiest to follow.	After using the Webassign pages all semester it was very helpful to be able to take the exams in the same format. I found that my level of retention was high, and the formats of the exams where conducive to excellent recall of the information we've studied.	Of course I would. I found the explanations of concepts to be exceptional and the assistance that Jennifer provided could not be matched. Any student that is working full time or has other full time obligations other than school, could not go wrong with this course, and this team of instructors.	No real improvements, just the section on logarithms was a little difficult to follow
I think that the grading and amount of work was reasonable.	I like the webassigments, but I wish that for notes, there was maybe online notes instead of just movies and tutorials.	I think it's a great idea	.Definitely, it saves you time so that you don't have to go to class, yet you learn a lot in the process.
Absolutely, I never felt too much pressure or as though I didn't have enough time to complete assignments	Excellent, I was extremely prepared by the workbook excercises as well as the endless submissions allowed for webassignments.	I think it allowed my to better understand my mistakes immediately instead of getting a test back days later and never trying the problems I got wrong again to see if I could get them right. 9 times out of ten, I got problems wrong because of silly mistakes and after taking the test, I could go back and never make those mistakes again	Yes, The flexability as well as the quality of the learning was superior than I have recieved in a classroom based mathmatics course. It's a lot more self-motivated and thus better prepares you for other classes with a similar style of learning.	Maybe a frequently asked questions area, especially concerning some math problems. Also, there were times when the examples presented in the tutorials were on a much simpler level than the webassign, and so I had difficulty with several problems which, although I knew the general method, became difficult when you add extra difficulty to the problems. (I remember a couple of Quadratic formula problems where this occured)
The grading was very fair, the webassigns gave me the opportunity to make sure that I got all of the points that I needed tog et to make a good grade.	The online materials were great. It kept me from buying a book that cost too much and let me look at the materials word for word as they were being taught.	The use of the work helped in situations that I was not totally sure on how to do, so I tried several ways, along with the way that was taught and found out which way helped me the most, which cut down on how much time I spent on test taking.	YES, the teacher was great, the course was very laid put and to the point, and there seemed to be a lot of help if there was the need for it. Even though we are in college and supposed to be adults, we all need a little help sometimes, and the help was always available. There will never be another teacher recommended like this one. He needs to teach everything at the university.	There is not much to improve on, maybe some group work within the class to get to know some people so that there can be some group studying, but other than that, the class was great.
I felt that this course was extremly well put together. No holes or inconsitancies.	The same goes for the online materials. Very well put together. Using both movies and pdf's account for different computing enviornments. Webassign works by giving immediate feedback and practice.	To be honest, I love it because it gives me chances to correct any careless errors that I might have made.	Yes. It is a good refresher course that is not demanding on a students schedule.	Possibly offer the movies in a different format. As a linux user, it takes some work to get a program installed and configured that can play back quick time. Mpegs and Real Audio/video formats would be better.
Grading was fair and amount of fwoek was reasonable. Having a deadline, with easy (online) access to both the problems and the tools neccessary to complete the problems, make it almost impossible to not complete the assignments.	To view the the mavies, you must have a reasonably up to date computer. That's one drawback. However, the pdf. formats are also informative.	Easy for both the student and teacher however you must be very familiar with the rules and parameters of entering the correct answers. ie. 2**.5 , or sqrt(2), or sqrt2, or even 2^.5 I believe was excepted once. This can cause problems when a student has the correct answer but phrases it wrong.	Yes. I would recommend it to people who do not have the schedule permitting class attendance, or georaphic location not allowing participation otherwise.	More available TA or professor help.
Yes. The grading was extremely fair. The amount of work was totally reasonable.	The WebAssignments and tutorials were very helpful. I give them a 9 out of 10.	I really liked the use of WebAssign for the in-class testing. It allowed me to feel like I did not have to stress out about the exams.	Yes, because it was very helpful, and the notes that Dr. Page gave out through the internet were thorough.	The Monday assignments did sort of stress me out because they were given during exam week.
yes the course was fair. It just was a lot for me with taking 19 hours. It was hard to make sure I had time for the clas.	The online couse material was vey helpful, but there were still times when I needed to seek outside help.	I think coming to take the test in class is very important.	Yes as long as they made time in their weekly schedule for the classwork.	I would suggest a net forum type site. So they if one student had a problem there may be more than one person with the same problem and it could make everyones life a little easier.
Yes on both counts.	Most of the materials in the course were very well done. The log section was very scant in terms of the movies. Some was intuitive, but the assignments and test questions were not easily determined (e.g., where do e^8 and 2e^6 cross?) just by virtue of the PDF and movie files. I would have preferred to spend more time on logs so as to better understand their utility.	It's an effective way to test what we really know as opposed to trying to sift through our work and find out where we made a mistake to give partial credit. This way we can do that ourselves, get full credit, and demonstrate that we know the material enough to correct mistakes.	Yes. It's a perfect way to take courses with limited time.	I would have liked to have more "real world" examples to see the problems work out. I guess I like to learn backwards, rather than learning the concepts first and then apply them to a problem, I like to have the problen and then determine the concepts to apply.
very	completely adequate	its the single best method of learning i have encountered	yes because of #3	some more required gatherings in class... once a month type of thing for just a general.. "is everyone ok" type of thing
The grading was very fair. The amount of work was also very reasonable.	I really appreciate the examples that were given in the movies. The examples really helped with the webassign and the tests.	I like the fact that we are allowed the use the webassign for the in class testing and the final exam.	I would recommend the class, because it allows the student to read the information and to turn the work in early with the webassign.