Student Evaluations

This is the first time I will get student evaluations...I am a little nervous because well I'm being evaluated but it will be constructive to me as a teacher to hear what they have to say. I've tried to encourage my students to talk about assignments, the class, etc as we went along, but I realized that they were worried about saying anything negative about the assignments, class, etc. I explained that my feelings don't get hurt because I didn't create the syllabi or assignments and that helped and because we all learn from constructive criticism. By the end of the semester they were open about things such as not liking group work because they couldn't find the time outside of class to meet. So we will see... In the meantime I did get a few nice comments from students. What I liked most about the comments was that they said I was patient and encouraging and didn't move on until they truly understood the concepts and that that these things made a huge difference in their experience. They also mentioned that I helped them to relate the concepts to things they will be able to use in their future careers.