Course Evaluation for Biostats VHM 801 at AVC - Fall Semester 2021

The purpose of this questionnaire is to summarize the students' experience of the course, as an aid for me (Henrik, the instructor) in the planning of the course in the future. Your answers will be entirely anonymous, unless you choose to identify yourself. Completed forms may be put in my mailbox (Health Management, 3rd floor North) or given to me directly anytime before or after the exam, as you prefer. Upon receipt of answers from at least 6 students, I'll post a summary of the responses at the course webpage.

General questions

Utility of different course parts

(scale for utility/usefulness/benefit: 1=little, 2=some, 3=considerable, 4=high; for the relative utility, give a percentage for the utility of each part of the course, so that the percentages add up to 100%, e.g. 20% for each part)

Course part	Worst thing(s) about	Best thing(s) about	Utility	Relative
			(1-4)	utility (%)
Lectures	.	.	.	.
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Lab sessions	.	.	.	.
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Textbook	.	.	.	.
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Web page	.	.	.	.
(incl. solutions)
Home assignments	.	.	.	.
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Overall	.	.	.	100%
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Comments:

Course benefits

If your last assessment was 1 (little), please state previous course(s):

Course workload and difficulty

	Assessment (1-4)
Course workload (compared to other 3 credit courses)	.
Course difficulty (compared to other 3 credit courses)	.

In addition: indicate which 2 of the statistical methods you found most difficult:
descriptive statistics, probability, statistical distributions and random variables, normal distribution, binomial distribution, one-sample analysis of continuous data, one-sample analysis of discrete data, two-sample analysis of continuous data, two-way tables, one-way ANOVA, two-way ANOVA, linear regression/correlation, non-parametric methods in general, sample size calculations.

Comments:

Statistical software

	small, would not use	some, would maybe use	considerable, would most likely use	high, would most certainly use
Familiarity with Minitab	.	.	.	.

Comments about Minitab:

Specific questions

• The distribution between lecture and lab time reflects the instructor's view that things are best learned by doing them (under guidance). One drawback of only two scheduled lecture hours is that some material is reviewed quickly, other material is deferred to the labs, and some (optional) material is not reviewed at all. Do you think the length and coverage of material in the lectures was appropriate?

  
  

  
  

• The attendance at lectures dropped substantially by sometime in October. I would appreciate your views on two questions related to this (regardless of whether you regularly attended lectures or not). First (A), did the lower attendance at the lectures affect your own experience of the lectures? (applies only if you attended yourself) And second (B), do you have any suggestions for the reasons behind the drop in attendance at the lectures?

  
  

  
  

• One relatively new part of the course is the review of "Summary Worksheets" from the Stevens (S) book, for most of the course topics. This year they were only used in the lab sessions, but they could also be included in other sessions. First (A), do you think these reviews were beneficial and should be kept in future runs of the course? Second (B, if yes to A), do you think these reviews are most efficiently done in lab time, or should they be moved to lectures (thereby taking away time for new material), or should they be moved to the lab review sessions (optional, and not attended by all students)?

  
  

  
  

• In the lab sessions, do you think their second part (after the initial review and demonstrations) with individual work on problems was effective in understanding concepts and getting software experience? Also, I would be curious to get your sense of what proportion of the (non-optional) lab problems you generally managed to go through in a way that enabled you to learn from them, as a rough estimate.

  
  

  
  

• This year the course material included additional links to recorded lectures and to some of the quizzes from last year. Were each of those two types of extra material useful, and would you recommend them to be kept for future years? For simplicity, indicate your answer about the usefulness on a 4-point scale (1=never used; 2=used little but didn't find too useful; 3=used some and found quite useful; 4=used a lot and found very useful), but separate you answers for the two types types of content, if needed.

  
  

  
  

• One of the potential challenges with the course could be that it does not rely on a single textbook. Please indicate which of the following options you used yourself:
  • The 4th (or earlier) edition of PSLS,
  • The 7th (or another) edition of IPS,
  • The S book, with necessary supplements,
  • Another textbook (feel free to indicate),
  • I chose to not use a textbook,
    

  Additional comments about textbook(s), for example your view on whether the course would benefit from switching to a single required textbook.

  
  

  
  

• One issue that generated a fair bit of discussion (and confusion) during the course was the access to Minitab software (beyond the computer lab). This is in part because the versions of Minitab available are somewhat different at different computing platforms (specifically, Windows versus Mac). I would be interested in knowing how/where you used Minitab in the course. Please select any of the following options that applied to your situation (for the entire course, and the out-of-class course work, e.g. home assignments):
  • I used Minitab in the AVC computer lab (218S),
  • I used Windows-based Minitab on my personal computer or at my desk/carrel within AVC/UPEI,
  • I used Minitab Express on my personal Mac-based computer or at my desk/carrel within AVC/UPEI,
  • I used the virtual access to Minitab set up by ITSS for the course,
  • I used another statistical software than Minitab.

  Additional comments about access to Minitab would be welcomed as well.

  
  

  
  

• My experience of the course was that for some of you things started to become challenging in early October, and therefore at a time roughly coinciding with the study break (October 11-15). If you agree with that, I would appreciate your thoughts on whether the study break was part of the problem, as well as any suggestions you might have to transition the course better over the study break. If you agree that things started to get challenging in October but find that this was not related to the study break, I would appreciate any other suggestions to explain why this seemed to happen.

  
  

  
  

Any other comments:

Many thanks for your help!
- Henrik