Rating My Courses

OLLI has concluded for the semester.  An entirely satisfying selection of seven subjects.  There are many ways to sort my seven.  Six in person, one online.  Five morning, two afternoon.  One lecture, six with DVD or other video format.  Six with a single speaker, all men, one with rotating presenters.  Two dependent on discussion, all with question options. Two held downstairs in a large room, four upstairs in smaller rooms.  Only one in a room with windows.

So that's my composite.  Instead, the courses are assessed individually, what went well, what needs review.  I did mostly well.  By now I have experience attending and only sign up for teachers who I know can present capably.  And this semester they all could, though sometimes they lack expertise with content of the individual DVDs that centerpiece the courses.

It is a lot easier to show a video for a third of a weekly session, then use that as a basis for expansion than to write a dozen lectures with power point for each class, though the people who go that route invariably do it well.

What I find missing is that multidirectional discussion that has made my medical immersion sparkle.  Sometimes the patient's situation is pretty mundane and encountered most days.  But one unique aspect stands out, one twist in presentation around which a whole new discussion takes form.  Common in medical rounds.  Very rare at OLLI.  Even if the question is more intriguing than the video everyone just watched, it gets answered rather tersely, usually by the class instructor.  It very rarely becomes a new path of inquiry in its own right.

We now have hybrid courses, where some participants attend in person while others watch the proceedings remotely.  Anybody can watch a PowerPoint or view a DVD from anywhere.  It's the same Great Courses disc whether you purchase it for your PC or watch it communally.  What you cannot readily duplicate is interaction.  Q&A with the instructor goes mostly OK.  Reframing that interaction to students with each other mostly goes poorly in that format.  Still, the remote option enables people who live far away, or maybe live nearby but could not realistically enroll if they had to drive another half hour each way to get the campus, or have frailties.  Zoom has enabled many beneficial upgrades, but at a price of interaction.

Over two days I filled out the evaluation forms for all seven of my classes.  Different formats, though many recurrent themes in the assessment.  There is a committee that tabulates the feedback.  It is less clear what they are able to convey to the individual instructors.  Comments that take diametrically opposing or irreconcilable views would also be expected.  But they have a chance to look at all seven on mine.