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1. What use have you had from the course? Was that what you had expected?
Students expressed satisfication with course content that it was what they expected, although some felt some lack in connection to actual experiments. For some it was hard to evaluate how usefull it will be in the long run.
2. How were the lectures?
The lectures were good, a good mix between power point and white board derivation, although some students prefered white board to power point. Students felt the content was suitable to their background.
3. How were the exercises?
The structure of the excercises where liked, that there was focus on particular beamlines was appreciated. The excercises felt important, and gave a good understanding. The simulations were fun.
4. Literature.
The literature was deemed good, some preference towards book as opposed to study from power point slides.
5. Exam vs. home duties, opinions on advantages and disadvantages?
The homeduties were over all appriceated, they helped distribute the workload and seemed to fit the course well.
6. Connection to other courses?
The course merged well with MAXM06/07 and the Wallén course. The only overlap seemed to have been in some exercises and the first week of lectures.
7. Any other comments?
A desire for an additional laboratory exercise regarding the optis was expressed, to give a better feel for spectroscopy.
The questionnaire form was provided to the students (7 in total: 5 LU incl. 2 PhD students, and 2 LTH students) before the presentations (week 51/2012). The questionnaires could be left to the voting box at reception to guarantee anonymity. The results as I see them are based on four filled feedback forms and are shown below together with my response to the feedback.
The first question is used to find out if the course provided such content the students expected. The content was mostly evaluated as expected but included also wish for more emphasis on experimental methods (1 opinion). RESPONSE: It is possible to increase the role of actual (measuring) instruments slightly; the course was based on a fairly well covering text book for the first time and some emphasis on subjects well treated in the book could be transferred to experimental methods.
Questions two, three and four were aimed to evaluate the lectures, the exercises and the course literature, respectively. The general feedback was encouraging but there were comments about the slides (2 opinion) and amount of exercise (1 opinion). RESPONSE: I made a decision to start using a text book as a backbone material for this course. The slides are still reflecting very much the old way when the lecture slides formed the backbone of the course. I have modified some of the slides so that there is more emphasis on the information that is not available from the book. I’m carrying on the modifications and the aim is to make an overall better match with the book. That concerns both the order and the content of the slides to build that connection more strongly. Number of exercise could be increased at present. I think that many of the aspects within e.g. optics could be more easily absorbed if some quite small scale calculations are included, the same applies actually to the experimental methods (see response for question 1): some idea of required data analysis related to the experiments could be given as an exercise.
I have not used conventional exam for this course under the last years. Also now, the home duty and the exercises were used as an exam. Question five is used to collect opinion about this examination method. Here all the opinions were supportive for the examination method; one disadvantage was also mentioned (1 opinion): one can prepare for an exam in a group whereas this is much more based on individual work. RESPONSE: According to feedback, I would evaluate home duty based exam as student friendly, in my opinion it has served well also as a learning tool.
Question six concerns connection to other courses: For most, positive overlap with earlier MAX-lab courses was given but also one comment without any than exercises. RESPONSE: As long as this course is given to so wide audience it will be difficult to match all the content to the varying background the students have – I think this is quite balanced feedback though.
The last question was left for other comments and only one opinion came out: additional laboratory exercise about optics and spectroscopy. RESPONSE: Special optics and special instruments are in active use by the external users and it is difficult to get access to them. This year there was chance for two demonstrations and if only access allows, I’m ready to increase that.
The questionnaire could be filled home and returned to voting box at the reception of MAX-lab.