Division: Natural Sciences and Mathematics (Nsm)

Winter 2011 Course and Teacher Evaluations – Online Evaluated Courses Comments Created on 03-16-2011

Division: Natural Sciences and Mathematics (nsm) Dept: Geography and Geology (geog) CRN: 2695.201110 Section: GEOG-4020-2 Title: Geog Research Methodology Instructor(s): Sutton, Paul C.

------*** 1. What are the strengths of the course and instructor? (eq1) "The instructor challenges the students and demonstrates an ability even online to push us to get involved. Very good discussion board posts." "professor is knowledgeable and friendly--effective teacher. The class was organized and expectations we clearly defined." "Very, very knowledgeable about the subject material!" "Course was effective at what I felt it was supposed to do - help students learn to think about all that goes into a research proposal." "It might be a good idea to figure out why some students were unable to send emails to professor Sutton through the DU email system.. very disconcerting" "I think the greatest strengths of this course were the knowledge and enthusiasm of the instructor and the weekly discussion boards. Communicating on a regular basis through the discussion boards made the course feel less like an online course." "Instructor poses challenging questions regarding the understanding of the material. The discussion boards and requirement to evaluate other proposals was very helpful." "Professor was very knowledgeable on the subject matter. The assignments were appropriate for the course." "Instructor is knowledgeable and pushes students to defend their ideas. Course reveals students research strengths." "Very focused on the research requirements for geography students. The CITI courses were of great help as well, the need for proper ethics in research related fields and how to conduct yourself with integrity were neat to read up on and then become "institutionally certified"." "Textbook was clear and easy to read. Course discussion boards got you thinking about course material and how to apply it." "I like the practical approach to learning taken in this course. Each reading and assignment was conducted with the goal that the concepts learned would be incorporated into the ongoing construction of a research proposal. I really felt like this helped me become more prepared for my capstone project by forcing me to do some introductory research to gain background understanding about my subject of interest." "I was glad that this class was effectively organized and I knew what was expected of me. " "The text book was excellent and will hold a permanent place on my shelf. Assignment of two critical evaluations of seminal papers in Geography was another high point for me. Initially, I thought the assignment was – just another book report. What I discovered was that I was expected to read the papers with a truly critical eye. I find myself wanting to read everything with that critical eye because it brings much deeper understanding of the material. I will take this lesson with me for life and strive to read with such criteria as I learned to do in this assignment. I will endeavor to express myself in writing and verbally, applying what I learned; anticipating others will evaluate my work so thoroughly. " "Paul is a fantastic teacher. He is definitely a good communicator. He is obviously an intelligent person and supports his arguments with valid data. He is VERY approachable. I had a change of heart after I completely digested the syllabus and understood the teaching methods. "

------*** 2. What are the weaknesses of the course and instructor? What improvements can you suggest? (eq2) "The weakness of this course was that it was too short and the concepts of research methods may be new to most students. This makes the initial research proposal for capstone quite difficult and extremely time consuming." "It may be more of a department or administrative comment: But sending out the requirements and details of the capstone project before the first week of class I think could generate better project ideas." "If I had to say something, It was a very heavy work load for the course. " "Discussion topics could sound like homework questions (and perhaps they have to) - sometimes they got bland responses and other times they provoked good discussion. I think this is a general weakness of online

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discussion in general. While participation needs to be required, it can't be helped to get the "I agree with so and so" or "The answer to the question is x." responses sometimes. These kinds of responses just don't get stimulating discussion going." "One improvement I would recommend is breaking the project proposal assignment into smaller sections due throughout the quarter. I know that we are adults and we should be highly capable and prepared to manage our own time but with all the complications within a graduate student's life it is really nice to have assignments broken down into smaller parts with specific due dates. It makes the large task of writing a capstone project proposal seem less daunting." "Would like to see more of a section on putting it all together. Maybe more examples of well written proposals." "The only suggestion I would make is to be a little more clear when creating assignments. I didn't feel like I had a strong sense of what you wanted. You did however provide examples which were beneficial." "I think that this course should be offered to students earlier in the masters program. I learned a lot of great, fundamental stuff that would have been beneficial to the corsework I have already completed. Although, this class does work well as prep for the capstone." "More weekly feedback through email along with the notices using Blackboard would have been nice. " "I felt there should have been more accountability for the students to completely read each of the chapters assigned in the book. I often found myself in situations where I was merely looking up concepts that were needed in the moment, rather than completely reading through the entire chapters.I personally despise discussion boards (when they are mandatory 'assignment postings'), but felt they had their intended effect of making me learn a few new concepts and think 'out of the box' each week." "I found that it took some time to hear back from the professor on the few occasions I needed his feedback, but overall he was much more responsive than many other online professors I have had in this program. I understand that he has several other classes. It took some time to get the grades up and for the longest time I had no idea where my standing was in the class." "Overall the course served its purpose. I wouldn’t consider my following comments a weakness of the course – just a difficult part of it. I enjoyed reading three other of my classmates Proposals. I would not consider myself as skilled enough to evaluate them, however. I found it thorny to rate a fellow newbie. " "Nothing...if I would have been better prepared...I would have done better. The caseload for this course is intense but it was described as such on the syllabus. "

------*** 3. Overall, how would you evaluate this course? (eq3) "Very necessary and effective. Dr. Sutton allows you to think out of the box and to think critically as well. Its rare to see in many courses so I can appreciate that." "great course for getting a general framework of geographic research methods." "A 10 out of 10." "I enjoyed the course and felt it prepared me to think about everything that needs to go into a research proposal. Now to decide whether or not I want to use my proposal in this class as my actual capstone proposal." ":D" "I learned a great deal in this course and feel very proud of the majority of the work I completed. I only wish I had had more time to perfect my capstone proposal. I would rate this course as quite excellent and I really appreciate the availability of the instructor for questions and concerns." "Very good course, very good instructor." "I thought this course was well done. The professor read everything that was posted and submitted. He had constructive feedback for all papers. One thing I particularly like is that he was not handing out A's to everybody. You had to work in this class! That is important for students its essential that everyone grows and learns in this program." "Good!" "A well designed, challenging course for forumlating and getting ready for the capstone project course. The peer review of other students' papers was pretty eye opening and helped to clean up my own research paper writing skills." "Great course. I learned a lot and will be able to apply what I learned in the completion of my degree as well as in other aspects of my career." "I had this teacher for a statistics class and thought it was a complete disaster from the standpoint of workload (too much work) and structure (1 huge assignment due every 2 weeks?) Not to mention other issues with the composition of the assignements themselves. However, it is hard to believe that this course was taught by the same instructor because it was a night and day difference.This class was just about right in terms of

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workload, as well as in the overall balance of the schedule (I thought the distribution of assignments was structured perfectly to avoid massive crunch time situations that are completely unnecessary when already working full time in the field - something I couldn't say for his statistics course)Overall I enjoyed this class and felt it was worthwhile and thought the instructor really did a great job in putting it together." "I would say this class is a 2.7 out of 3." "This course challenged me to think in a way that is highly valuable to my development as a professional. Additionally, before taking the course I didn’t understand how a thesis was even to be conceived, let alone proposed or written. I now have some comprehension and feel more confident and better prepared to produce work that may hold up to scrutiny. Make no bones about it. This instructor may be considered a “hard-ass” by students. Be that as it may, he did challenge students to realize more than might have been thought possible, not unlike other instructors, and so the end was accomplished, albeit painfully. Perhaps pain and “punishment” is not a necessary prerequisite to learning. There may be other, more constructive avenues. I get a sense this instructor is out to prove something. " "I wished I would have done better,but I would recommend him and his course strongly to any student."