Course Evaluation

Course Evaluation
for the classes on
Natural Language Processing and Information Extraction
by Fabian M. Suchanek in December 2011
at Gaston Berger University, Saint Louis / Senegal

Please help Fabian improve his teaching by answering the following questions on a sheet of paper (in English or French). By handing in the sheet you agree that your responses may be published on the Web in an anonymized, summarized form.

Please rate the classes on a scale from 1-5:
- difficulty (1=too easy; 3=ok; 5=too difficult): 3.4 ± 0.68
- speed (1=too slow; 3=ok; 5=too fast): 3.1 ± 1.26
- interesting (1=boring; 5=very interesting): 4.5 ± 1.26
- social atmosphere in class (1=bad; 5=great): 4.9 ± 0.06
- in-class exercises (1=too few; 3=ok; 5=too many): 2.8 ± 0.64
- time at the whiteboard (1=too few; 3=ok; 5=too much): 3.2 ± 0.07
- teacher makes sure students understand (1=not at all; 3=a bit; 5=a lot): 4.1 ± 1.05
- overall rating for the class (1=not a good class; 5=great class): 4.1 ± 0.81
- Any suggestions or comments?
  good; good ambience; encouraging teacher; good that the slides are in English; translate the slides to French; satisfactory [teaching] method; you do not take into account students who do not have certain prerequisites. You always assume that students have seen everything; good atmosphere; Fabian is very good; I like; good teaching; in future stay for more days;
Please rate the slides on a scale from 1-5:
- clarity (1=unclear; 5=very clear): 3.9 ± 0.64
- examples (1=too few; 3=ok; 5=too many): 3.7 ± 0.81
- text (1=too few text; 3=ok; 5=too much text): 3.4 ± 0.69
- density (1=too few content per slide; 3=ok; 5=too much content): 3.5 ± 0.41
- overall rating for the slides (1=slides are bad; 5=slides are great): 3.9 ± 0.53
- Any suggestions or comments?
  images good; make less content; good that in English; translate to French; important class; too general; more illustration; more algorithms; too large subject; overview was too brief; very good; slides are very funny; I like; reduce the slides that are not important for the labs;
Please rate the labs/TPs on a scale from 1-5:
- difficulty (1=too easy; 3=ok; 5=too difficult): 3.3 ± 0.81
- clarity (1=not clear what I should do; 5=very clear): 3.3 ± 1.52
- match for course content (1=no match; 5=very good match): 3.4 ± 1.54
- overall rating for the TPs (1=TPs are bad; 5=TPs are great): 3.8 ± 1.1
- Any suggestions or comments?
  good; helpful for learning; not easy; learned many things; more TPs; helpful to learn difficult with our background, but feasible; thanks for the Elvis biography; want more TPs! more examples for the TP to facilitate comprehension; take into account what students know; more explications before the labs; labs are very interesting! I like! more labs!

Lessons Learned

I was visiting the Gaston Berger University in Senegal for one week to teach Natural Language Processing and Information Extraction on Master's level. We probably misestimated the difficulty of the class for the audience completely. I reduced the content of the class and the labs by 50% at runtime, but still, more time would have been more appropriate. Consequently, students faulted that the labs were too difficult. The evaluation comments also show a high heterogeneity among students.

Students also find the slides too dense and do not find them completely clear. On the upside, practically all of them enjoyed the class and the atmosphere in class.