SIRS SUMMARY REPORT Subject Course Section Term IBIO 355 001 FS20 Instructor: IAN MCCULLOUGH Number of students enrolled: 209 Number of replies: 128 Date generated: 12/30/2020 8:35:18 AM INSTRUCTION Q.# Question 1 2 3 4 5 Omit % Mean Std. Dev 1 The instructor's enthusiasm when presenting course material. 40.1% 41.7% 16.5% 1.57% 0% 0.78% 1.79 0.76 2 The instructor's interest in teaching. 48.8% 33.8% 17.3% 0% 0% 0.78% 1.68 0.74 3 The instructor's use of examples or personal experiences to help get points across in class. 46.0% 35.7% 15.8% 1.58% 0.79% 1.56% 1.75 0.83 4 The instructor's concern with whether the students learned the material. 38.5% 29.1% 24.4% 6.29% 1.57% 0.78% 2.03 1.01 5 Your interest in learning the course materials. 24.2% 39.8% 33.5% 2.34% 0% 0% 2.14 0.80 6 Your general attentiveness in class. 20.3% 41.4% 33.5% 4.68% 0% 0% 2.22 0.82 7 The course as an intellectual challenge. 20.3% 39.8% 35.9% 3.90% 0% 0% 2.23 0.81 8 Improvement in your competence in this area due to this course. 21.0% 41.4% 30.4% 7.03% 0% 0% 2.23 0.86 9 The instructor's encouragement to students to express opinions. 40.6% 31.2% 22.6% 3.90% 1.56% 0% 1.94 0.96 10 The instructor's receptiveness to new ideas and others' viewpoints. 35.1% 33.5% 24.2% 6.25% 0.78% 0% 2.03 0.95 11 The student's opportunity to ask questions. 39.0% 39.0% 18.7% 2.34% 0.78% 0% 1.86 0.85 12 The instructor's stimulation of class discussion. 37.7% 29.9% 26.7% 3.93% 1.57% 0.78% 2.01 0.97 13 The appropriateness of the amount of material the instructor attempted to cover. 25.1% 26.7% 26.7% 14.9% 6.29% 0.78% 2.50 1.19 14 The appropriateness of the pace at which the instructor attempted to cover the material. 28.1% 28.1% 29.6% 10.1% 3.90% 0% 2.33 1.10 15 The contribution of homework assignments to your understanding of the course materials relative to the amount of time required. 14.9% 32.2% 32.2% 16.5% 3.93% 0.78% 2.62 1.04 16 The appropriateness of the difficulty of assigned reading topics. 17.9% 27.3% 39.8% 10.9% 3.90% 0% 2.55 1.02 17 The instructor's ability to relate the course concepts in a systematic manner. 36.2% 32.2% 25.9% 4.72% 0.78% 0.78% 2.01 0.93 18 The course organization. 25% 33.5% 27.3% 10.9% 3.12% 0% 2.33 1.06 19 The ease of taking notes on the instructor's presentation. 30.4% 32.8% 29.6% 4.68% 2.34% 0% 2.15 0.98 20 The adequacy of the outlined direction of the course. 23.4% 36.7% 31.2% 7.03% 1.56% 0% 2.26 0.94 21 Your general enjoyment of the course. 21.0% 32.0% 28.9% 13.2% 4.68% 0% 2.48 1.10 COMPOSITE PROFILE FACTORS Category Items Mean Standard Deviation Instructor Involvement (MCCULLOUGH,IAN) Items 1-4 1.81 0.85 Student Interest (Non-Instructor) Items 5-8 2.20 0.82 Student Instructor Interaction (MCCULLOUGH,IAN) Items 9-12 1.96 0.93 Course Demands (Non-Instructor) Items 13-16 2.56 1.09 Course Demands (MCCULLOUGH,IAN) Items 13-16 2.33 1.10 Course Organization (Non-Instructor) Items 17-20 2.30 1.00 Course Organization (MCCULLOUGH,IAN) Items 17-20 2.08 0.96 STUDENT BACKGROUND Q.# Question 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Omit % Mean Std. Dev 22 Was this course required in your degree program? 96.8% 3.17% 1.56% 1.03 0.17 23 What is your sex? 25.7% 74.2% 0% 1.74 0.43 24 What is your overall GPA? 0% 1.57% 7.87% 29.9% 60.6% 0.78% 4.49 0.70 25 What is your class level? 4.72% 16.5% 50.3% 28.3% 0% 0.78% 3.02 0.79 RESPONDERS' COMMENTS FOR IBIO 355 001 (FS20) Question 26: Do you have any comments or suggestions for organizing the course? At the beginning of the semester I thought this class would be like any other class, but the professors did a great job presenting the material and including the students in the live lectures that it made the class enjoyable. This class transitioned very well to online and it was very well organized. Both professors were wonderful; however, the difficulty of the lectures and in class work did not even compare to how hard the quizzes and tests were. I would completely understand a lecture and then the quiz or exam would be significantly harder with trick questions. Course was great! Utilize Documentaries and case studies more. Dr. McCullough was awesome. His section of the course was explained well and easy for me to understand. Dr. B is so nice and enthusiastic, but I was disappointed that she took this class being online to her advantage. Every week we were to meet Tu and Thur. On Thur, it was an hour and 20 minute synchronous class, while we got the other portion of our lectures delivered online. Dr. B's lectures were always way longer than the allowed hour and 20min of lecture, going over by 40min on some instances. Not only did she go over, but she said so much that wasn't on the slide that was necessary so the lecture took even longer due to it having to be paused. It bothered me so much, because I had other classes I needed to focus on, and this one class was taking up more time than it was supposed to. Dr. McCullough maybe went over a couple times, but not nearly as bad as Dr. B. Also, Dr. B rarely answers emails. I emailed her multiple times and got 2 responses back. I found it difficult when the instructors kept switching. I was able to learn very easily with Dr. M. teaching and then found the material a lot more difficult to understand when Dr. B. started teaching. I liked the class and thought it was super interesting but the homework load each week is kinda alot. Having to read 2 chapters, watch 4 videos, and take 6 quizzes every week made me have a bad attitude toward the class. I would love if they would have more dropped quizzes throughout the semester because some of them were pretty hard or I just didnt have time to put 100% effort into them. I really liked the instructors, Mary was super bubbly and Ian was subtley hilarious, both were super smart also! I preferred the structure that we had at the beginning of the course, where we would watch a lecture, take a quiz, watch a lecture, take a quiz. I think this helps us solidify the knowledge we just learned, rather than make us anxious about taking two quizzes after two lectures. I really did not like how we had to do the lectures outside of synchronous class times. This made it so actual sychronous times just felt like busywork when we could have actually been given the lecture. Doing the lectures outside of class was a huge waste of my time, and it was very frustrating finding time to do it all. Also, in the exams, I was marked off on essay questions because I didn't know exactly what the professor was looking for. If each essay question can explain how the points are allocated (the final exam did this, thank you!), I would appreciate this. I really enjoyed the course, thanks for teaching it! I really enjoyed this course. The only suggestion is to have one professor teach the first half and one teach the second half, this would be easier to adapt to then Dr. Bremigan teach for one section, Ian for the middle two, and back to Dr. Bremigan. It was difficult to get out of Ian's routine and back to Dr. Bremigans so late in the semester when im already pretty burnt out and just going through my routines I really liked this class. I think the professors were really good! I thought that Ian did a much better job explaining things and teaching than Mary did in my opinion. I felt that I struggled alot more when Mary was teaching and I had to rewatch lectures and reread the book to understand concepts she was trying to teach. I would have everyone turn in the in class activity I had issues with teammates forgetting or things not being graded and I don't know if it never got turned in or if it hasn't been graded. I would suggest to post a weekly checklist of everything that a student needs to complete each week. It was difficult to take notes and the hand-graded quizzes significantly altered my grade poorly and we were given no feedback on our answers. Therefore, I'm unsure about what I did wrong. The exams did not allow for enough time to finish- I constantly was pushing the limit of completing everything and often times I would have to guess due to the time constraints. Less readingsand post lecture quizzes Making the quizzes out of the best answer instead of average I think would be more beneficial. Overall the professors were very inclusive and respectful and I very much enjoyed taking this course, there was a very heavy workload though, most of my time went towards this course n/a no no comment. No I do not No suggestions, I thought it was organized very well! No. None None. Overall I enjoyed this class but I found the structure of the online class difficult. This class had the most homework out of any class I had this semester. I think the quizzes and the exams were harder than they needed to be because some questions were poorly written, had more than one answer that seemed correct, or the question was difficult to understand. Other students have reported to me that questions are unclear and that the class structure does not work well for them. Readings weren’t very helpful Six quizzes and four 15-30 minute lecture videos on top of attending class once a week can get overwhelming sometimes. The amount of material we were expected to cover each week with the long lecture videos and multiple quizzes was overwhelming. I don't feel like the synchronous Thursday lectures helped me that much when understanding the course material. I feel like the class should either be completely asynchronous or meet on the days we were supposed to in order to cover course material rather than have a ton of outside work to do on top of meeting once a week The constant grading for accuracy made it extremely difficult get high grades. The course was exceptional in almost every area. The only area that I would suggest changes in would be the quiz policy. It was very confusing when it was first instated, though it improved slightly after it was modified. It seemed designed to punish the student for incorrectly answering questions, rather than encouraging the students to improve their comprehension of the material on subsequent attempts. The D2L quizzes weren't organized very well. Sometimes questions addressed in the book were in the lecture quizzes and visa versa. The material is very much pandering to a aural learner which I know I do not fall into. I struggled with this class because most of the things you learned were by listening to someone speak with no words to follow. I learned most of the material from the book. I know that COVID limited the type of instruction in which we could receive, but I did not feel like I was getting a great education in this course. The feedback was not easily accessible, hand written quizzes got zeros like crazy when my answers were clear and concise, never was able to see why it was wrong. The organization of the course was messy and hard to follow. The amount of exams was hurtful rather than helpful as well as the amount of quizzes which did not aid in my learning the material. The classes were not helpful at all as they were not used as a learning time only a socialization time as we did primarily group work which did NOT aid in my learning of the material at all. Dr. Bremigan wasn’t interested in students personal questions or aware of what was even going on in her class Ian was more aware than her. The weekly quizzes being separated for a total 6 nearly every week and then sometimes only being 2 points is not ideal. I'm sue points end up the same, but combining at least the lecture quizzes might take away some stress of students in the future. The workload for this semester was ridiculous. These professor act like this is the only course their students were taking in terms of assignments. The in class group activities were a waste of time considering we usually have very little of the expectations of the assignment given to use and we had to work with different peers we didn't know every time. It was really frustrating relying on other's work for a grade in this class. I hope these professors change breakout rooms into the same group of people for every class. Also hand graded quizzes with only 2 questions on it really affected my grade because if you only get one of them right its still an 50%. These quizzes should be included with the autograded ones. This class was difficult for no reason considering the actual content. There seemed to be a lot of outside work in this class which really forced me to spend a lot of time. Way more than an if it were in class just with the amount of lecture we had to watch along with the one day synchronous session. 6 quizzes every week was a little much. This class should have been completely prerecorded or not, having both was distracting and added more course work than the credits implied. This class was exciting, and I enjoyed the material, but I felt myself drowning in the multiple weekly lectures and the reading. I was also struggling to keep up with the 6+ quizzes. The amount of work I feel would be okay if I didn't have 4 other classes with the same large workload and a full-time job... I started to doubt my intelligence... This class was extremely difficult I know several students including myself suggested Ideas on how to potentially make the course easier because learning online made learning the material incredibly hard, there was really no change in the course even though many members of the class I know are not doing well. It's extremely fast paced and there is not a lot of time to catch up on the work we didn't understand. There was 2 chapters to read a week with 6 quizzes a week, the amount of work assigned didn't offer students the chance to be able to study the material properly before we had to move on to new topics. This class was just set up so strange. 66 quizzes for one class is just insane, and there needs to be less. it was way to many little things. and 1 hand graded question was worth the same as 8 MC? like the weight of each quiz was not that fair. the MC should be like 70% of the quiz grade and hand graded should be 30, not 50/50. Other then that, the videos were all fine, but sometimes the quizzes had questions that WERE NEVER MENTIONED IN THE VIDEOS, and i don’t understand how that is fair either. But overall, the material was presented well, but the quizzes need an overhaul. and i know just about everyone in the class complained about them, and if that was fixed, less quizzes, just combined, and some fairer questions, would make the class way better This class was ridiculous with the quizzes and not coordinating with lectures or readings this class went at a pace that was very fast. it covered lots of material in a short amount of time that i couldn’t keep up with comfortably. it caused me lots of stress and anxiety. I felt like i had no time for other classes because of the work load of this class. the weekly quizzes were not helpful. I didn’t learn from them. they only made me feel like i was incompetent of learning. This was a very resourceful class. At times, I felt the work got a bit repetitive, but that is the best way to learn for online school. I wish that there was more opportunities to ask questions. This was a wonderful class with wonderful, accommodating professors. This was one of the best classes I have taken at MSU. For the class to be so well done and you both to be so accommodating at a time like this means so much to me. This was the only class with video lectures I enjoyed or reading I wouldn't just try to speed through. Thank you so much. My one comment is that there is a little disconnect between the two professors on the exam. It is very easy to determine what test is written by which instructor. This relates to both the difficulty of questions and the level to which the learned material was to be applied. While I would have preferred to take this course in an in-person setting, the professors definitely made online learning more bearable! I would happily take another class taught by either of them again. :) Would assign video lectures that would take more time then when we would actual classtime, grading would take forever didn't get feedback on in class assignments till after the final so I dont undertstand how they thought that would help us. If this help I don't fill out sirs unless I love the class or hated them. I dont understand... we went online you have to change a few things doesnt give you the right make the class much more difficult just by how the class was organized... This should also hint I am 4.0 student completing my degree in 3 years By far one of the worst classes i have taken