Keeping in touch with your class: Short class evaluations

Especially for a beginning or fairly new professor, a primary concern of teaching is the preparation of proper material for each class session. This paper discusses a way to determine how well the students are learning the material, especially in quite large classes, as well as their opinions on the course. A search of the literature shows that the "Minute Manager" stands out as an easy and effective way to receive continuous feedback on the delivery of a course. This paper describes how the author has adapted the Minute Manager for use in her courses and program seminars. The questions asked on the Minute Manager evaluation are: 1) What was the most important thing that you learned today? 2) What did you like most about the class today? 3) Do you have any questions about the class today? Are there topics that are muddy? 4) Do you have any questions about the course? and 5) Comments. At the bottom of the brightly colored half page, the student is asked to circle the overall rating of the class from 1 = Excellent to 5 = Very Poor. The paper will discuss uses of the Minute Manager, the types of answers that can be expected, and the student impressions of their use in a junior-level statistics problem-solving class for engineers.