Becoming A Teacher Workshop August 18, 2005 Evaluations by attendees The email message below was sent to each attendee of the 2005 workshop. The names of the responders were removed as agreed. All evaluations received are reproduced below, unedited. "Thank you for participating in the Becoming a Teacher Workshop! We value and appreciate your feedback about the workshop. Please take a few minutes and let us know your honest and thoughtful comments; such as was it helpful, well organized, did it cover topics which were useful to you as a new(er) teacher. The Graduate School values your response in making future decisions about this type of activity. Your comments will be presented anonymously (I can copy your comments out of your return email or you may send them to me at my campus box below if you wish). I will also forward your comments anonymously to Drs. Damour, Curzan, and Johnston. We would love to hear from you. Thank you!" --I really enjoyed the seminar; it was well-organized, informative and fun. The presentation section by Dr Johnston would have been better if we had talked about analyzing our own styles more. I think an excellent addition would have been a compilation of TA opportunities for grad students at UCD because I want to have a teaching experience and was told I could find one when I was interviewing here, but now that I am here I am being told, “Good luck, we don’t know of any and we can’t help you” by the professors in my department. Thanks. --Very good workshop, lots of humor and honest examples by the presenters. Feels like I would have a better start when I am in front of the students. Good pace. Perfectly suited for first timers. --It was very well organized and I found it extremely useful. --I thought the workshop was well presented and very helpful. They covered a myriad of topics and were lively entertainers too. --I don't remember ever enjoying myself at a lecture more than I did at this workshop!! The afternoon went by too quickly! All of them were great speakers and were great at getting the audience involved!! I can't wait to begin teaching!! --The training appeared to be helpful to several of the participants, chiefly through helping them put their fears at rest. However, much of it felt overly simplistic to me. Don’t try to be your students’ friend (i.e. go out for coffee) and don’t freak out if a student asks you if you have ever taught before seems pretty intuitive. I would have rather had some discussion about the how you go about engaging students (some of the “teaching to adult learners” literature). I found that because it did not meet my needs, I left early. --I would say the workshop is really great. It's well organized, covered almost all the topics that are useful to us as a newer teacher, and very help. I also love the atmosphere of the workshop. Thank you very much for holding such an excellent workshop. --Thank you for facilitating the Becoming a Teacher Workshop day. I drove from Colorado Springs and was not disappointed that I made the trip. The presentation by Drs. Damour and Curzan included extremely valuable information and was delivered in an upbeat, funny and overall delightful way. Everything they said fits the nursing academic classroom and clinical post conference venue perfectly. I am so pleased to have their book which elaborates on more useful suggestions. The extra copy I purchased was received with great anticipation by my colleague. Dr. Johnston also offered great perspectives on presentations and I really appreciate the well done handout, Analyzing Your Presentation Style. I have already shared some of the tips from it with my daughter who is doing many presentations in her job. I would have enjoyed hearing Dr. Johnston's specific opinions about the teaching style of the video we viewed in the course. Thanks again for this amazing class, the delicious food, and the comfortable conference room. I just can't believe this was available for free. --I found the workshop to be extremely valuable. The information was very insightful and will be helpful. The speakers themselves were very effective as presenters and I will consider them role models in my own teaching. --Thanks for organizing this workshop. It was really great. I learnt a lot in terms of knowing what to expect in a classroom setting. It was very helpful and well organized talk. Everyone was so involved that no one realized how 3.5 hours passed by without a single yawn. Excellent job. Most encouraging fact reiterated was that the teacher is in control of the classroom. Many of the situations discussed would have occurred to all teachers sometime or the other. Interestingly enough, I realized that there is a lot to learn just to be a teacher. More workshops of this kind would be very welcome. Thanks again. --I really appreciate the workshop. It was helpful, and well organized. The way it was presented was creative, and dynamic. The topics were easily applicable in the real world. I will definitely use the most of the techniques I learned from the workshop. Please inform me about similar organizations in the future. --I was very happy that the University sponsored such a wonderful symposium. Drs. Damour and Curzan were outstanding in both their advice and presentation style. I would have liked if Dr.Johnston adjusted the content of her presentation a bit, the clip and discussion were great, but the small group work seemed to lack direction and at least my group wasn't sure what we were supposed to be discussing. --I thought it was a fabulous afternoon. Drs. Curzan and Johnston are a great team. The presented interesting information that will be very useful for me as a new teacher. They really answered some valuable questions and dealt with the fears that I had not even thought of yet. However, the third session, I really was not a fan of. Although the presenter had good intentions, it was a topic that could have been expanded and something more creative could have been done to emphasize the points about analyzing your presentation style. I did like the take home packet though! Thanks you for this workshop, it was very well organized and interesting all around! --Overall the workshop was helpful and I really appreciate that it was offered (along with the free book) to graduate students. I did not find the 'Analyzying Your Presentation Style' portion as helpful as the rest. The packet is helpful but the group work we did during that section was not helpful. Thanks! --I thought it was very well done and glad I participated. --I found the ‘what would you do in this situation’ activity the most helpful, as I have been presented with a number of those situations in the past, and have dealt with them with varying degrees of success. I thought Anne and Lisa worked very well together, and really enjoyed their descriptions of their teaching experiences. I thought the ‘presentation style’ presentation could have been given a lot more time, but time shouldn’t be taken from Anne and Lisa. Really, this should be expanded into a full-day workshop. Thanks for organizing this, I really learned a lot. --Thank you, it was an informative class. You do present the way that good instructors do...with animation and good pace for info. You also had assistance for problems. I was a little uncertain about the film we critiqued, because there were so many varied responses. I would have liked a little more about ways to teach and yet the film did not really get presented as a model to observe as well done?? Thanks again, it was great and the book is an asset. Truly, I appreciated the message that learning our own style is best. --I found the 'Becoming a Teacher Workshop' to be very informative. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the workshop. It was very helpful and made me think about many aspects of being a teacher that I had never thought of, such as how to handle difficult students and student/faculty relationships. I have been focusing on course structure and lectures only and none of the personal issues. The one thing I think that would make the workshop even more helpful would be to briefly cover the topic of construction of a syllabus. --Thank you very much for putting on this workshop. I found it to be very beneficial and entertaining. I really enjoyed the "high-powered duo." They were very stimulating and very good at what they do. They fed well off eachother and inspired me to be a better educator. The 3rd portion of the workshop regarding presentation styles was not as helpful. Watching the physiology video felt long. The discussion was rather vague, and we didn't cover any new information during the small group discussions. Once again, thank you very much for this opportunity. I look forward to applying the concepts that I learned. Thank you very much,