Student Evaluations
Vancouver Island University has a strong reputation for small class sizes and personalized instruction. Many of my postgraduate courses have enrolments of less than 20. However, another quirk of VIU is that there are no teaching assistants or proctors, which means that the professor is responsible for all course design, delivery and grading. This is a blessing because it allows the instructor to respond rapidly and decisively when something needs to be altered in a course, but a curse because there are few external resources to draw upon if something goes wrong with a course. Thus, the professor has either all the glory or all the grief depending on whether the course goes well or not.
Thanks for all your help and inspiration Brad.
– J. Stevens, 2020
Once a professor is past their probationary period, mandatory student evaluations of courses ceases. Unfortunately, there is no mechanism to permanently opt in for voluntary course evaluations. Nevertheless, I have continued to request voluntary evaluations of courses.
Given that this was an online course, you might naturally expect to feel some distance from the instructor; I never felt this was the case. Brad was completely present, communicated well with us, and showed-up ready to work hard for the students. His communication style lends itself well to teaching online. He gave clear instructions on assignments, which was probably not easy since this was a new course to him. I really appreciated the timely feedback on assignments.
– Anonymous Student Review, Geog 582, Fall 2019
Here is a graph that summarises my student evaluation scores for those courses that have been evaluated.
A detailed breakdown of student evaluation scores in PDF format is available for download for the period after Fall, 2018.
…thank you for taking the time to give proper, critical feedback. My wife is a teacher and I know how time-consuming it is.
– Mark Dahl, 2019