my evaluations - teaching effectiveness

The full TRACE report for OR 6205, Spring 2026, with my own reading of the items where I came in below the department

My first course as instructor of record was a graduate operations research course. Six students registered, five attended, and all five responded. With five respondents no mean here is a robust statistic, and I publish the whole report rather than a selection, because a committee that finds the low items on its own has found something I hid.

Where I came in above the department

Item Course Dept.
Online course materials were organized to help me navigate week by week 4.80 4.45
The instructor displayed enthusiasm for the course 4.80 4.55
The instructor provided sufficient feedback 4.60 4.29
The instructor facilitated a respectful and inclusive learning environment 4.60 4.54
Online interactions created a sense of community with classmates 4.50 4.18
Online interactions with my instructor created a sense of connection 4.50 4.29
In-class sessions were helpful for learning 4.40 4.34

Where I came in below it

Item Course Dept.
The instructor used class time effectively 3.80 4.42
Out-of-class assignments were helpful for learning 3.80 4.44
This course was intellectually challenging 3.80 4.48
I learned a lot in this course 3.80 4.52
The syllabus was accurate and helpful in delineating expectations 4.00 4.56
Required and additional course materials were helpful 4.20 4.48
The instructor came to class prepared to teach 4.20 4.58
The instructor clearly communicated ideas and information 4.20 4.36
Overall rating of teaching effectiveness 4.20 4.41

What I think happened

A student diagnosed it precisely.

“I wish there were more structure to the course because sometimes in class we would be learning about one topic, but then somehow shift very quickly to a different topic that becomes too high-level for me to understand.”

I was moving between levels of abstraction without marking the transitions obvious. The sessions were engaging while there were jumps between theory and practice that were not clearly stated, which is how sessions can be rated helpful at 4.40 while learning is rated at 3.80.

The second is the flipped-classroom concept I’ve adapted since the beginning. The only out-of-class work I set was reading a textbook students found unusable, and one of them suggested videos instead. I’ve changed after the feedback, and included scaffolding videos and additional materials. That explains out-of-class work at 3.80 and materials at 4.20 better than anything else does.

The third issue, regarding the syllabus, it was a compromise. I negotiated the syllabus with the class and then kept changing the course during the term to adjust to feedback and my own feeling of how the class should flow. A student praised that in this same report, despite the low rank at the end. The negotiated syllabus page has both versions and what I have changed since.

What I carry into the next course

  1. Name and close the day’s thread. State the topic at the start, announce transitions out loud when a discussion moves from formulation to theory and back, and close the thread at the end.
  2. Start the semester with the scaffolding materials my own students rated highest, at 4.80, plus short videos of the kind the student asked for. I have built that sort of series before, during the remote transition at UTRGV, and they are on the videos page.
  3. Keep the ungraded in-class practice, which is doing real work, and add a small number of low-stakes graded checkpoints. Every in-class exercise was formative by design, so that attempting a problem carried no penalty. What I did not anticipate is that I had also removed the instrument students use to answer “how am I doing.”
  4. Give change defined places to happen, so that it reads as a decision rather than as drift.

I am on a dissertation completion fellowship this year and not teaching, so this is a plan rather than a repair in progress.