Galen T. PickettAsst. ProfessorPhysics and AstronomyPH3-103
California State University Long Beach 1250 Bellflower Blvd. Long Beach, CA 90840-3901 (562) 985-4934 vc (562) 985-7924 fax
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The students of my Fall 1999 PS112 section have really performed a great service to the students in the Spring 2000 section. As you can see below, while there is still some mention that the course is paced too fast, the occurrence of this comment has gone way down. In part, I think, because I intentionally tried to slow the pace of the course, especially the middle third part where the mechanics of Isaac Newton is introduced, and I made sure that copies of my transparencies were available in the library on reserve. I do not intend each piece of information on those transparencies to be committed to memory, or to be written down. I mean them to be a supplement to the treatment of the book. The best way to use the transparencies is to read the material first, and then look for the stuff you've just read in the lecture. With the notes in the library, the pressure was off in trying to copy everything down, and I think more students merely paid attention to what was going on.
If there is a further theme, it is that the lecture
needs to be made more exciting, with more demonstrations, and a closer
tie-in to the experimental portion of the course. This will
be the focus of my attention when I next teach the course.
Written Comments from evaluations:
1. Dr. Pickett was real good and helpful.
He definitely made the course more fun than it could have been. He
was very effective.
2. Prof. Pickett has great examples in his
lectures about Physical Science. He is a great instructor.
3. The way the information was presented was
unclear. The exams were difficult and occasionally I questioned whether
I had even heard of the information.
4. He is a good teacher.
5. I really enjoyed this class. The
transparencies are a good idea. I like the fact that you have your
notes in the library. This helped me pay attention in class instead
of copying notes!
6. The instructor is very helpful.
7. Great professor!
8. Sorry ... 8 am classes are always a bit
hazy for me. :) Thanks for the email about the "clip" experiment.
9. The class was interesting.
10. His teaching was clear and understandable.
He is a fair man and I enjoy coming to class every morning. He gave
us all an equal chance to do well.
11. Having overheads really helped and also
having examples helped me to understand the material better.
12. This teacher was an excellent teacher.
He made this hard material easy to understand and interesting. I
wanted to vote for him for the Merriweather award, but I missed the deadline.
Great teacher.
13. A lot of
information was covered in each day of class. I liked that the lecture
notes were available in the library.
14. We need more than 50 minutes for exams.
15. Professor
could have found a more interesting way to teach material. Lab and
lecture have nothing to do with each other. The material is totally
different between the two. Need to make them more related to one
another.
16. Galen Pickett is a good teacher for this
course. A student can see that his determination to help you learn
is abundant. The course could use more
in-class experiments and examples to help
students learn.
17. This is a very organized course.
I actually got a lot out of this course and really enjoyed PS112 for the
first time. I like how you followed your transparency notes with
the book. It also helped when you took some review questions and
went over it before each test. That really helped. I would
have to say you are one of the first teachers to make science enjoyable
for me. Thank you.
18. This instructor was very effective and
I learned a lot. I enjoyed this class greatly.
19. Dr. Pickett was very helpful in aiding
students that needed to boost their grades up. He provided us with
the opportunity of extra credit and the chance to redo assignments.
20. All I wanted to say is that you made the
class easier than it is. Although it is a hard class, at least for
me you made it very easy to understand. I want to thank you for your
patience and understanding when it came time to turn in our experiments.
21. I feel that since this is a freshman oriented
class, I felt bored as a senior which made the material unappealing.
I feel that you could probably present the
material with some more student involvement,
which will keep your students interested.
22. Professor Pickett did very well.
From knowing many people in the other Physical Sciences classes, he was
the best of the bunch. The only problem
with his teaching is that he goes a little too fast sometimes, and he assumes
we know a lot more than we actually do.
Just slow down and explain a bit more is all. Other than that, he
explained this terrible book very well and I think he did a great job considering
the book is so poorly written. Of all the people I know who took
the class and (even some teachers of this course) nobody liked the material
(book). Does anyone up there care? The book sucked. Can
I say it anymore? This really needs to be reevaluated if you really
care about what the students think. Thanks, Dr. Pickett, for doing
so good, and actually caring. You really did well, especially compared
to the other profs. Peace.
23. Mr. Pickett is a very good instructor.
He is fair and has given his class every opportunity to do well in this
class. The lectures are great - he knows his stuff.
24. Prof. Pickett was a great instructor.
He was always very patient and explained everything well. I really
enjoyed this class.
25. The teacher seemed very excited and educated
about the information. He also is very understanding about the grades,
but
when lecturing he moves way too fast.
last updated: Aug. 7, 2000
