View source for SFC undergraduate education committee meeting 2006-11-29

Present: 4 UGs, 4 faculty.  Chair = Christine

==== Introductions ====
* Undergrads met on 2 Nov; Christine handed out notes

==== Teaching quality ====
Seminars for better teaching
* Discussion of how to get faculty to participate
* Problem we are trying to solve: uneven teaching
* Perhaps set something up for new faculty (assistant professors)

TQFRs
* Use scantron forms?  Publish the results
* GPS binds together TQFRs and hands out to all of the faculty
* Perhaps when you drop a course, you should have to fill out a questionnaire (why did you drop)
* Finding a way to provide feedback is very useful, but need to be careful that comments reflect teaching and not just the difficulty of the course
* Is there a forum where faculty get together to talk about teaching?
** Could we create some sort of forum for interdivisional meetings?
* Who reads faculty evaluations and how does feedback happen?

Problems to solve
* Communication between professors and TAS - TAs don't know what the professors want
* Class web sites are useful; would like to see more of these 
* Lecturing style
** legibility of the writing; can't tell what they wrote
** projection; speaking to the room instead of to an individual or the blackboard
* Materials out of data - sets were ignoring some new technology

Ideas
* Possibly survey ombuds next term to see what people are doing and what works
* Midterm survey in courses that we (people on the committee) are involved with
* Could we create more meetings between students and faculty?

==== Undergraduate workload ====
Advising
* Some students never meet with their advisors; except to get drop cards signed
* Some people take classes and then realize that it wasn't the right collection; nobody along the way who can provide advice
* Online course registration is convenient, but it cuts down on advisor/advisee communication

General theme
* More faculty/study interaction

==== Class attendance ====

==== Centralization of teaching ====