Peer Review Portfolio
Judy Provo-Klimek
  1. Focus Question
  2. Microscopic Anatomy and AP 710
    1. About the subject
    2. Connection with other courses/disciplines
    3. Course design
  3. Teaching Microscopic Anatomy
    1. My teaching style
    2. Personal goals for teaching Microscopic Anatomy, AP710
    3. My syllabus
  4. Implementation
    1. Lecture sessions
    2. Problem Based Learning activities
    3. Laboratory discussions
    4. Time spent outside class
  5. Results
    1. Evidence of student learning
    2. Suggestions from students
  6. Implications
    1. Reflection
    2. Planned changes
  7. Appendices
    1. Appendix A: Sample PBL Exercise
    2. Appendix B: Examinations
    3. Appendix C: Samples of student work
    4. Appendix D: Teaching Evaluation data

 

Teaching Evaluation Data

 

Written comments for AP 710, Fall 1999: All comments are verbatim and are not corrected for spelling and/or grammar. All emphases are from the original.

Complementary: (17 total)

  1. Dr. Provo was always willing to go the extra mile in helping students be it review sessions or a kind word. She is very enthusiastic about the material she teaches and obviously loves what she does. Dr. Provo was a pleasure to listen to during lecture and get to know.
  2. Dr. Provo is a very effective teacher who knows her material. She puts things in a perspective that is easy to understand. She seems very concerned that the students learn the material. She conducts herself in a very professional manner.
  3. Dr. Provo is very interested in communicating the material to the students. She speaks with flection so that it is easy to understand and listen when she lectures. She also is easy to approach with questions (in and outside of class/lab). It is obvious she genuinely enjoys her job.
  4. Dr. Provo has gone well above and beyond her required effort to be available after hours and to provide a wide variety of learning sources in micro and gross anatomy. She seems to genuinely care about our learning and succeeding.
  5. Dr. Provo is willing to help the students outside of class and this is beneficial to us.
  6. I thought the PBL sessions were helpful…I wish we did more blood "analyzing" (but I know we will do this at a later date!). Personally, I found the prelabs to be helpful, it was nice to see and hear about structures before going into the lab to id. them.
  7. She conveyed information in a clear and organized manner. She was very flexible and made herself available during exam weeks during her free time.
  8. I appreciate all the effort put in after class by Dr. Provo. Her slides/lectures are well organized.
  9. Very good about helping out in lab & lec. Knew the material quite well. I felt that she was a good teacher, but tests were a little tricky. However this is a difficult subject for me.
  10. Willing to take time to help students outside of class. Knows material well. Explains subject matter well.
  11. Dr. Provo along with Dr. made micro lab go smoothly by teaching during pre-lab. This was very beneficial and thorough. Dr. Provo also did a good job making it around and answering questions.
  12. The PBL exercises were very helpful and provide a welcome break of monotony on Thursdays. I like Dr. Provo’s teaching style and receptiveness to questions both in and out of class. The slide shows and review quizzes on the computer are also very helpful for me.
  13. I think its good that she was willing to have reviews and help sessions outside of class. Very helpful!
  14. Understandable, helpful, clear & willing to spend time. Excellent teacher.
  15. Dr. Provo is an excellent teacher! She invests a great deal of time outside of the class hours!
  16. Dr. Provo is easy to understand and willing to help.
  17. She really knows her stuff and teaches it very well. She makes us want to look into it and LEARN more.

Critical/Complementary: (10 total)

  1. Her exam questions were different than what was stressed in lecture (ie. avian questions on exam 2). Certain points believed to be "minute" are tested more heavily than the class was led to believe. Fill in the blank notes are distracting. Effort and preparation of course work and concern for students is excellent and were appreciated.
  2. The exams seemed much different than the review/study questions provided and some points that were not supposed to be "stressed" on the exam, were. The notes provided in class are difficult to follow and printed very small. Having to fill in information is both distracting and not conducive to learning. The conceptual maps provided are an excellent study guide/aid. Dr. Provo is extremely knowledgeable and very easy to approach with questions. Overall, she is an exceptional instructor.
  3. Sometimes the writing in class to complete notes is too much. I understand you want to keep us awake & in class but you can do that with less writing. I would also like it if the slides on our notes were larger and didn’t have the lines on the side. Sometimes the small slides are hard to read. Your time spent outside of class and after hours is greatly appreciated. Thank you not all of the profs do that.
  4. Dr. Provo is an excellent teacher. She is willing to give 150% and that is greatly appreciated. The only qualms I had was with grading. It was hard to get points back if you felt the question was unfair. Other than that she was a great teacher!
  5. I think Dr. Provo did an excellent job in teaching this class along with the lab. She was very helpful both during and outside of class. The only thing that hurt us was her test material for lecture tests. The questions/paragraph format was often unclear and confusing. I would appreciate more defined and straightforward questions.
  6. Very organized lecture. Clear and precise on what was expected of us. I didn’t like filling in the blanks - it was hard to tell, sometimes, when we needed to fill in and when we didn’t. Sometimes trying to compare notes from lecture to figure out what to write was distracting.
  7. Her effort as an instructor is high but her effectiveness is not.
  8. You need to remember that we are lowly freshmen and have never heard most of this stuff before. Reviews would be very helpful in class (even if it is a short review of the previous class). Also, stressing (at least a little) the points we need to know - for practicing or tests - would also help. I liked the notes for the most part because the things we needed to know were in them. However, your lectures usually make them more understandable & I can’t listen to most of the lectures because I’m trying to fill in the blanks. THAT SUCKED!
  9. The test questions you create are sometimes very tricky and unclear. The prelab portion that you explain is very excellent and has been extremely helpful in understanding the microscope slides. The quizzes on the computer are very excellent; however, the slide show is sometimes hard to understand because sometimes I did not know which areas the comments were directed to.
  10. Dr. Provo did a good job in explaining most things. Sometimes she needs to explain differences in some structures a little better.

Critical/Negative: (14 total)

  1. Dr. Provo often does not agree with Dr. . This becomes very confusing when trying to keep material straight. Her exams often seem much less than straightforward.
  2. Personally, I would prefer lecture notes to be a reference. I would rather add clarifications to a complete set of notes while being able to follow along with the subject, than to have to scribble sentence completions to get the notes, then be completely confused when I went over them at a later time - when I wasn’t able to seek clarification (you aren’t around at midnight). Due to the limited accessibility of the computer lab, I think putting the lectures on a CD we could take home would be nice.
  3. I felt that some test questions on scopes were hard to discern, when we couldn’t move the slides.
  4. Usually not very accommodating outside of class.
  5. At times, I felt you were intentionally trying to trick us; I don’t feel that this enhances our learning but instead our confusion!
  6. Her lecture notes are sometimes difficult to follow - I don’t think the PowerPoint format works very well for this subject.
  7. Need to write fill in the blank questions more like Dr. where at least a partial definition of the term desired is provided. In your questions (fill in the blank) there was often not enough context with the word removed to be positive what you were looking for. They make sense to you because you wrote the sentences but to anyone reading the sentences with blanks they are ambiguous.
  8. Adopting more of an outline type format would have helped me. Please keep the amount that must be written in to a minimum, and that which must be written in please show that with a blank. Spending time analyzing what was written on the slide versus what was written in my notes distracted me from the lecture.
  9. Try to make the PBL’s more like Dr. ‘s PBL’s and less like busy work.
  10. Dr. Provo’s lectures were somewhat hard to follow. I spent more time trying to figure out what I needed to fill in than I did actually listening to the lecture. Some of her exam questions also seemed a bit ambiguous. Sometimes I just didn’t know what she was asking.
  11. I think all micro. teachers should get together and agree upon what we are responsible for knowing on tests. They all give conflicting information.
  12. Oftentimes information Dr. Provo provided would conflict with what Dr. would say.
  13. I did not like having to fill in the blanks on the lecture notes. It distracted me from actually paying attention to what was being said and from comprehending the lecture.
  14. The communication between Dr. Provo and Dr. was sometimes very poor. We would receive different/wrong answers from Dr. Provo sometimes. It was very frustrating to not have all the teachers on the same page.

 
 

Last modified March 13, 2001