Reflecting on teaching another term

Every semester the university conducts formal course evaluations which enquire about the course as well as the lecturer. This past semester was my second to last term teaching W200 where I could incorporate student feedback into my teaching practices. Since I began position as an Associate Instructor teaching W200: Computers in Education I have struggled with a few repetitive issues which include a lack of clarity in giving project directions and my unapproachable personality. One of the big changes I have made in my instruction is bringing in specific examples of my k12 teaching experience and to explicitly describe my instructional decisions. I believe that making the learning environment authentic, by drawing my experiences, would make the content more approachable. Also by explaining to the student why I make certain teaching decisions I believe that will help them become better educators. While I felt as though I had improved on these aspects they were negatively commented up on in my fall 2015 evaluations. Again this semester, some of my students felt that I wasn’t giving clear enough directions on the major projects and that my personality was blunt and overly sarcastic. Despite these negative remarks the students ranked my instruction fairly positively. Overwhelmingly, the students didn’t like the course load and the 3 hour classes. My students believed that I was an outstanding instructor (3.4/5 and 2.9/5) and promoted an “atmosphere conductive to learning” (3.6/5 and 3.5/5). The students stated that I motivated them to do their best work (3.3/5 and 3.1/5) and I emphasized student learning and development (3.7/5 and 3.4/5).