SOS101 - emnerapport 2008 høst
Faglærers vurdering av gjennomføring
Praktisk gjennomføring
Strykprosent og frafall
The percentage distribution of men and woman was as follows:
Total men 22 and total women 48 originally signed up for the course
38 women and 15 men have finalized the course
Karakterfordeling
The distribution of grades is on a normal curve, with a majority of students performing average, and a minority above and below that average.
The course has overall gone well and according to the course objectives. There were 70 students registered of which 61 took the examination and 53 have achieved a final grade.
The distribution of final grades is as follows:
A 4
B 8
C 24
D 15
E 2
F -- 2
Studieinformasjon og dokumentasjon
All lectures have had a PowerPoint presentation that was posted in my space, also all sorts of practical and administrative information have been also posted in the my space sides of the course as well. Information about the colloquiums and the guiding questions for the colloquiums were also posted in my space.
Tilgang til relevant litteratur
The course had two mandatory books as reading list, and several suggestions for further literature were given during the lectures on in the lecture notes. Student assistants running the colloquiums have also made suggestions for further readings in their interventions.
Faglærers vurdering av rammevilkårene
Lokaler og undervisningsutstyr
The course was held in the main seminar room of Ulrikes Hus, with standard access to PowerPoint and internet that was useful and well functioning. The lights in the room are difficult to graduate and tone down. IT assistance was promptly received when needed.
Andre forhold
The course has had a very complete and quite coherent administration system, with coordinated work among the administration and the scientific leader, including with the colloquium leaders.
Faglærers kommentar til student-evalueringen(e)
Metode - gjennomføring
The evaluation was performed and summarized according to the following system: the students responded to a series of multiple choice questions. The answers were handled and evaluated by the NSDstat and use for the creation of tables. There were also some open questions. The answers were also compared to those received from this same course given in 2005. This is because the reading list and contents of the course were changed from that last time the course was offered. The questions were about the level of satisfaction with the course, lectures and colloquium groups as well as about the difficulties of the reading list and exercises and exams. The evaluation offers a summary of the results and charts showing quantitative results.
Oppsummering av innspill
The evaluation is a standard format that was unfortunately answered by too few students, 26 is total. Of those who answered the evaluation this is their distribution according to, age, sex and background:
77 % are women
77 % are between 19 and 22 years old
11 % have studied under one year, 65 % has studied 1-2 years, 19 % 3-4 years
81 % are part of a Bachelor program at UiB, 62 % of these are of sociology
The evaluation gives good guidance about the perception of the students regarding the changes in this course, one of the mandatory courses for the bachelors in sociology. First, the seems to be a certain consensus among the students that the course was a bit too difficult and more so than the reading list in earlier variations of this course.
42 % of the students are satisfied or very satisfied with the class. 31% svarer more or less satisfied. This represents a change in comparison to the responses in 2005. In 2005 around 71 % of the students were satisfied or very satisfied with this class. In regards of the interest for the subject, the numbers are quite good, 73 % answer positively.
Of those who respond to the evaluation, there is a majority who has attended between 6 to 9 lectures, and there is a similar percentage of attendance to the colloquiums. Amongst the criticisms expressed by the students it comes clear that there was a general perception of the difficulty of the class (perhaps related ot reading classical original texts), in relation to the course evaluations of before and too much reading assignments. Also, some people seem to have complained that they were not advise that that majority of the lectures will be in English and they associate that to the difficulty of the course. The evaluation reads in this regard as follows: 35% are satisfied with the lectures, 31% answer they are more or less satisfied, and 35% are dissatisfied. This represents a negative change in comparison with the evaluation in 2005. In that past evaluation, 55% of the students were satisfied with the lectures. Some students have responded that they were not happy with the lectures being held in English and that this was not informed before hand. Some students did not like that the main lecturer keep an active classroom asking questions to students related to the lectures.
In regards the mandatory essay, students seem generally satisfied. This is stated in the evaluation:
Det viser seg også at studentene har jobbet mye med innleveringsoppgaven. 96% sier seg svært enig (68%) eller litt enig (28%) i påstanden Jeg har jobbet mye med innleveringsoppgaven. Kun 1 student oppgir å være uenig i påstanden. 56% av respondentene er fornøyd med kommentarene de har fått på innleveringsoppgavene. The summary of the evaluation claims: Students in SOS 101 this fall keep being satisfied with the class. Even though the percentage of satisfied students is lower than in 2005, there is still interest in this course. The work with the mandatory essay was ranked positively, but there is potential for improvement of the lectures and seminars. SOS 101 is for the first time given with a reading list in English, so the responses are tha this was more difficult. All the practicalities around course worked well.
Ev. underveistiltak
Faglærers samlede vurdering,
inkl. forslag til forbedringstiltak
As the evaluation results state, this class has changes its content and thus students have reacted a bit negatively to both an English based reading list with original text from classical sociologist and the main core of the lectures being given in English (and some claim this was not properly announced). To the first reaction I wish to say this is something bachelors students need to become used to, but the course needs to be properly announced as being co taught in both Norwegian and English. I am in general satisfied with what I think is an average performance, but still showing what is a general characteristic of these types of courses: students do not do the necessary reading and thus the course becomes difficult to follow. In addition there is a variety of backgrounds, with a class composition of both first semester students and older ones with stringer backgrounds and so on. I think that the choice of the reading list was not fully accreted, in that the reader with the classical texts tended to be relegated in favour of an interpretative secondary literature text. I think that it would have been better to have a second text that applies some of the work of the classical theorist to concrete issues (preferably to contemporary sociological issues). The secondary literature can always be additional to the actual pensum. The unsuitability of that secondary text was also seen in the performance of the essays, where too many were fully reliant on explanations offered in that book and not in original work by students reading and interpreting the original texts.
Regarding the lectures, I think there was a small group of students who have regularly attended as well as actively participated the lectures. To the comments that questions to the class during the lectures were not a good idea I must respond that all pedagogical theories and practices point towards the complete contrary of that judgment. In fact, I think that a class like this requires a lot more in class participation and activity in order to work further with the classical texts. As the class becomes more practiced by lecturers and lessons are feed in later offering however, I think many of the critiques of the course as well as the results can be substantially improved. The performance of the class was in general average with some cases of outstanding performance and very few very los grades.