I value Student Course Evaluations. To be honest, some comments are difficult to swallow even though you know they are not exactly accurate. I’ve heard of a colleague who doesn’t read that stuff, probably because of some very immature remarks by students. I’ve had my share of remarks like that. Once one student wrote in my Abrahamic Faiths class, “I did not learn anything new in this class because I took World Religions class in high school.” When you read something like this statement, you know immediately that it is not true. For one, he had probably never read the books I assigned for the class in high school, or even for my class. Since the class was small, I knew who wrote it. I weed out remarks without substance like the one mentioned above. Yet there are plenty of good remarks that are very helpful for me to be more effective in my teaching. I value those remarks, and I have quoted some of those helpful remarks by my students and responded to them elsewhere in this portfolio. I actually ask my students to write down what worked and didn’t work for them in my class so that I can listen to their points of view and modify my lecture and exams. Of course, I appreciate affirmative remarks like “His knowledge and personality make it fun and interesting to learn in his class. I have a closer relationship with God. Thanks to him.” I try very hard to make learning fun and interesting, but it does not come from my personality but from my intentionality and hard work. All the hard work is worth it when students write: “I definitely didn’t want to take his class at first, but after having him for the whole semester, I can absolutely say that I enjoyed his class and that I love his ways of teaching;” “After hearing some rumors that Dr. Cha’s class was really hard, I was nervous about taking this class. Now I’ve taken it, I am so glad I had Dr. Cha as my professor, and I can’t wait to take him again in the Fall for the Old Testament class.” I especially appreciate responses like the following: “He challenged his students with assignments that were thought provoking and not always the easiest to accomplish. But our thinking patterns improved because of it.” That is exactly what I am striving to do in my classes.
Also it is through their evaluations that I found out I need to work better with some students with learning differences. Administering quizzes on Canvas has eliminated much of that sort of problem, but I do appreciate their feedbacks and need to be more sensitive to their needs. I have also learned from some of my students’ evaluations that I show favoritism. It is a very small number, but I have to acknowledge it to some degree. Even though I try to be fair to every student, I think I do have favorite students soon after the first exam. I do appreciate hard working students, and it may appear to some students that I show favoritism. I cannot deny that completely. But I try to be fair to all students, and I try to include even not so academically inclined students in our class discussions so that they feel comfortable to engage in class discussions. Yet I do ask good students to share their responses more often than others. I think some of that is unavoidable.
Another area my students keep mentioning frequently is the difficulty of my exams. Even some of my top students suggest that a little easier exam would be good. I actually examined a couple of exams written by somebody else. My exams are surely harder than the ones I examined. Certainly, I will continue to improve my exams in any way I can. Yet I will continue to challenge my students to think critically and charitably. I also provide small daily assignments for my students to compensate the difficulty of my exams so that if they work hard it is not hard to get a good grade in my classes. These assignments are designed to encourage my students to be active learners in the class, reward those who are active learners, reinforce the learning of key concepts and ideas multiple times, and more evenly distribute points and learning requirements across the course so as to avoid pinning their entire grade and memory on major exams. In my classes exams actually take up only thirty to forty percent of the semester grade. The rest are various projects, which require much of my time to grade.
The Prophetic Literature is an exemplar class which I modify quite a bit based on student evaluations. I remember hearing about a ACU student body survey concerning students’ spiritual walk with God. The survey said over eighty percent of ACU students feel closer to God when they serve others. Since our students are already kin to social justice, I thought I would start this course with a strong emphasis on social justice to help my students see that the Prophetic Literature is indeed very relevant to what they are already concerned about. In the Spring of 2016 I rearranged course work so that it starts with discovering problems in our context and find solutions in the text. Reading assignments in the beginning of the semester included chapters from Robert Reich’s SuperCapitalism, Paul Kruggman’s The Conscience of a Liberal, and Michael Sandel’s Justice: What Is the Right Thing to Do? to help my students experience what these great minds impart. Then my students read the first chapter of Abraham J. Heschel’s classic The Prophets, “What Manner of Man Is the Prophet?” My aim was to help them become empathetic with Israel’s prophets just as they were empathetic with God. Just like the prophets did, I wanted my students “feel fiercely” and realize the “importance of trivialities” in God’s kingdom because “to the prophets even a minor injustice assumes cosmic proportions.” Cicero declared, “The gods attend to great matters; they neglect small ones,” and Aristotle taught that gods are not concerned about external things. Unlike ANE and Greco-Roman gods, the God of the Bible is deeply concerned about human affairs, even trivial ones. Ancient society cherished wisdom, wealth and power above all else, but to the prophets such infatuation was idolatrous because God delights in kindness, justice, and mercy instead (Jeremiah 9:23-24). I wanted my students experience all of these, so I arranged before semester started our class visits to the Christian Service Center, Habitat for Humanity, and International Rescue Committee work at 11th and Willis Church of Christ. Sometimes we spent class time, but other times it was a half a day on a Saturday and the worship hour on a Sunday. I was there with them all that time demonstrating my willingness to go beyond the expected to the extraordinary. Yet four students out of twelve responded “Definitely False” on the student evaluation item, “As a result of taking this course, I have more positive feelings toward this field of study.” When I saw that my heart became very heavy because I felt I failed to educate them. It probably is one of those students who wrote, “I actually did not learn much about the prophets. This is a shame considering that I’m going into ministry and I’ll need to do a lot of personal research to learn about it.” Another student wrote, he is “walking away more confused…about the prophets.” One student was very unsatisfied because “the first MONTH of class was spent not learning about the prophet.” Yes, overall rate is actually not that terrible because one half of the class gave me the highest mark on rating me as an excellent teacher. But I still failed to educate the one-quarter of the class. Maybe I was too pushy. Rather than letting them discover on their own, maybe I bombarded them with too much information that they could not handle at the moment. I hope and pray that even those four will one day finally get it as one student wrote, “Maybe someday I will process all that I tried to learn in this class.”
I know the readings were extensive and not easy in the Prophetic Literature course, and exam grades were low with only a couple of As out of 15 students. I had several graduating seniors in the class, and two of them in particular didn’t do well at all. I curved exams quite a bit later. I know I can always improve my teaching, and I had already thought about making some changes in the course. I used Canvas quizzes, and the students completed the quizzes before they came to class. Since they took the quizzes with the help of the books and articles, maybe they didn’t read the reading assignments thoroughly. So this semester my students are taking the quizzes in class. I wanted a third eye, so I asked our department chair Rodney Ashlock to go over the student evaluations and my course syllabus. He reminded me of the fact that these students had made their choice to take the Prophetic Literature out of different Bible offerings. One student specifically indicated that he was very excited to take this course but was very unhappy at the end. Rodney also suggested I start with actual prophetic texts early in the semester.
This semester I am teaching the Prophetic Literature again, so I made several adjustments. I am taking a roughly chronological approach this semester so that my students are to read the text of Amos in the second week. They have already read a chapter on the prophets from Gorden Fee and Douglas Stuart’s popular level introduction to biblical interpretation (a textbook that I used when I taught Biblical Exegesis at Cascade College in Portland, Oregon, and also one of the textbooks used in our department for biblical interpretation) How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth. This chapter begins by noting how easy it is to misread the prophets and that the difficulty stems from an inaccurate prior understanding of the term “prophecy.” This chapter would have been useful last semester because this would have helped my students see why I did what I did, that is emphasizing justice and righteousness. Also Heschel’s chapter has been moved up to the second week to enhance students’ understanding of Israel’s prophets. The chapters from Sandel, Krugmann, and Reich that are not overtly related to the prophetic texts are removed from the reading assignments but are retained in the list of the supplemental books to which I added Angus Deaton’s The Great Escape and Joseph E. Stiglitz’s The Price of Inequality. All five books have already been chosen by students this semester, faster than other books that are written by biblical scholars. I made this change with the hope that my students will discover on their own that the biblical scholars and these experts from political science and to economics all share with the prophets the same pursuit of the common good. Other changes in the course include: moving quiz to in-class which forces the students to actually read the assigned readings; having more in class small assignments to be more interactive, reinforce their learning, and disperse grades; exams will also be edited to simplify it to some degree; and since we meet twice a week reading assignments are lighter than the previous MWF class.
What have I learned about teaching thus far? I strongly believe teaching at a Christian liberal arts university is relational and pastoral. I work hard to establish personal relationship with students to provide the feeling of a small school they so desire and convey that I care about their success not just in my class but also at ACU in general as well as in life down the road. As I mentioned elsewhere I start a semester with a pep talk, and their first assignment is to write me a vocational essay. I challenge myself to memorize their names by the beginning of third week. I usually have about 150 or more students each semester. I solidify this pastoral relationship building by inviting them to my house for dinner. I play sports with some of them. I try hard to make more students involved by using excellent one-point essays previous students wrote and thereby demonstrate that I value their responses and views. The most frequent one that I use and give credit to whom it is due is “Deutero-conomy” coined by Austin Reed on his essay exam. It means economy according to Deuteronomy. I am known as a GPA killer to many of my students, so I am not bashful about my high expectation of them. Yet I provide enough room for them to catch up even if they fail a couple of small assignments or quizzes by dropping the lowest two or three. I remember Nhi Nguyen who was in my freshman Bible class in Spring 2015. After the first exam she was very concerned about her grade. She received a D, and as a health-profession major she was definitely not happy about it. She was not a Christian, so she did not know Bible stories at all. I encouraged her that I’ve seen students like her and if they are willing to work hard they can be successful in my classes. Thankfully, she worked hard and concluded the semester with a A for the semester. Of course, she was happy with her grade. It brings me great joy to see my students learning and growing, and I invest my whole heart into teaching them. This means that at times the handful of negative remarks such as, “I did not learn anything,” can be discouraging, but over all, student course evaluations are helpful and challenge me to be a more effective teacher and grow alongside my students. As it is often said, each class has its own personality, and I can never be complacent even in classes like Message of the Old Testament, with which I am so familiar in that I can tech it even in my dream. Below are the links to Student Course Evaluations and Annual Reviews by the Department Chair. Annual Reviews by the Chair
Link to IDEA Course Evaluations Summary Spring 2015 – Spring 2016 https://acu.campuslabs.com/faculty/#/
Fall 2014 Course Evaluations Summary
Spring 2014 BIBL102T03 BIBL 102T04 BIBL21101-1 BMIS45801
BIBL21103 Fall 2013 BIBL21104 Fall 2013 BIBL45401 Fall 2013 Cornerstone Evaluation 2013
Spring 2013 BL10202 BIBL453 BIBL10204
Fall2012 BIBL45401 BIBL21104 BIBL21105
Spring 2012 – BIBL10203 BIBL10205 BIBL10206 BIBL4540
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