Teacher/Faculty Workshop Evaluations
Instrument 5: Workshop Instructor College Chemistry Course Interview
Project: Sparky IntroChem: A Student-Oriented Introductory Chemistry Course
Western Carolina University
Funding Source: NSF - Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE)
Purpose: To assist faculty in understanding the effects of course innovation on student learning experience
Administered To: Workshop instructors (presumed to be graduate student instructors-place) in introductory college chemistry course
Topics Covered:
- Background Characteristics & Activities (Teacher/Faculty): purpose for participation, education
- Perceptions (Teacher/Faculty): student engagement, student participation, student understanding, impact, practical value, role
- Workshop Evaluation: practical value, expectations, opportunity to learn, opportunity to practice, instructor, content, engagement
Format/Length: 36 open-ended questions
Workshop Instructor
College Chemistry Course interview
developed by
The Learning through Evaluation, Adaptation and Dissemination (LEAD) Center
University of Wisconsin Madison
adapted for use in Chemistry 132 at Western Carolina University
Spring Semester 2001
Chemistry Course Interview Consent Form for Workshop Instructors
The Chemistry Department is conducting interviews of some of our undergraduate courses. The
interviews are designed to assist faculty in understanding the effects of course innovations on
students learning experiences and may lead to improvements in the teaching of chemistry nationwide.
We are asking workshop instructors to be interviewed about their learning experiences teaching in the course. The interview should take about I hour to complete. In order to correlate responses with demographic data and measures of achievement we are asking you to write your Student I.D. number on the survey.
All workshop instructor responses will be held strictly confidential. We will generalize about responses so as to obscure the identity of any particular students before reporting any survey findings. We may publish papers based on the results of this survey, but these materials will contain no information that would identify particular students.
Any questions you have you may ask now, or you may call Dr. Royce S. Woosley, at 227-3667.
I have read the above and give my consent to participate in the study.
Signature ____________________________________________ Date ___________________
STUDENT I.D. Number ____________________________________________
(Please write your I.D. both here and fill it in on the upper left corner of
the bubble sheet) |
We wish to thank you for participating in this national study of how students learn in college
chemistry courses. The questions in the interview are intended to help researchers understand your
experiences in the chemistry course in which this survey is being administered. Your thoughtful
responses to the questions will enable us to help faculty across the nation improve
chemistry education.
Copies of this consent form can be obtained at 231 Natural Sciences.
Chemistry 132 Workshop Interview Protocol
Introductions and presentation of the Informed Consent form.
Briefly review points from the Informed Consent. Check that the workshop instructor
is comfortable with the tape recorder. If not, just take notes.
Background |
| 1. |
Take a few minutes and give me a brief history of yourself -
a history that helps me to understand how you came to be a workshop instructor in this course. |
| 2. |
What, if any, preparation did you receive to be a workshop instructor in
Chem 132? {Probe for formal and informal experiences.} |
| 3. |
What were your initial expectations about what it would be like to be a
workshop instructor in this course? |
| |
|
Goals |
| 4. |
What are your goals for student learning in Chem 132? |
| 5. |
What are the professor's goals for student learning in Chem 132?
How, if at all, do your goals differ from the professor's goals? |
| 6. |
When you started doing workshops in this course, how confident were you that
it would be successful? {Probe for thoughts about groupwork.} |
| |
|
Workshops |
| 7. |
Could you describe what you do as a Workshop Instructor for Chem 132? |
| 8. |
How is the workshop going, at this point? |
| 9. |
Do you feel that you are meeting your expectations/goals for yourself?
Why, or why not? Are there things that have hindered your ability to do this? |
| 10. |
What have been the hardest things for these students to learn? Were
there particular things you did that seemed to help? Were these new strategies for you? |
| 11. |
From your experience, what, if anything, do you feel students get
out of attending? |
| 12. |
How many people usually attend? |
| |
a. |
Is it usually the same group of students? |
| |
b. |
Is there a particular type of student who tends to attend? |
| |
c. |
Do you have any ideas on why the ones who don't attend, don't attend? |
| |
|
Workshop Meetings |
| 13. |
Can you describe the Workshop meetings. What are they like? What
is the purpose of the meetings? |
| 14. |
What, if anything, do you get out of them? |
| 15. |
Are student concerns/difficulty with the course discussed at
these meetings? Are strategies for addressing these problems devised? |
| 16. |
Do you have any suggestions for changes to the workshop meetings? |
| 17. |
Having come close to the end of the semester, what is your opinion
on the adequacy of workshop instructor training for this course? |
| |
a. |
Were there aspects for which you felt the workshop instructors could have
used more preparation? |
| |
b. |
Aspects which were particularly difficult? |
| |
c. |
Anything else that could have been done to make you as successful as possible? |
| |
|
Closure |
| 18. |
Are there particular problems that you or the students have experienced
in this course that we have not already discussed? |
| 19. |
Do you have any other thoughts about the efficacy of particular teaching
strategies that you or the course professor have been employing? |
| 20. |
We will be interviewing students soon. Do you have issues that you want
discussed or specific questions you would like the students to discuss? |
| 21. |
Is there anything else you can tell us in order for us to understand
Chem 132 better? |
| 22. |
Do you have any questions or comments that you would like to share with me? |
|
 |
