Summarized Student Evaluations

Summary Figures of Main Evaluation Questions

Selected Student Comments*

• "This course was FANTASTIC. It was a great entry course for stata. Learning coding programs can be difficult, but I think Professor Lundebjerg did a great job of striking the balance between letting us struggle through debugging and helping us with solutions. The collaborative environment of the course made it conducive to asking questions and reaching out for help, which was fantastic. I'm so much more confident about my coding abilities in general, and this course is majorly applicable. I can not recommend this class and this professor enough. Thank you Professor Lundebjerg!!!!" - In response to Q7: "Please provide additional comments about your experience in this course." (8/9 responded)

• "Barbara Lundebjerg was a great instructor. I have probably had 5+ PhD instructors for lab classes and she has been the top teacher." - In response to Q7: "Please provide additional comments about your experience in this course." (8/9 responded)

• "I don't have any experience in economics, so I was afraid that I would be very out of my element. To my surprise, I felt very comfortable, and the material was applicable to all majors that are interested in research. I liked that not only were we learning about coding, but we were also understanding why researchers did the statistical analyses they were doing. I think this increased my ability to be able to use STATA in real world applications." - In response to Q7: "Please provide additional comments about your experience in this course." (8/9 responded)

• "One of my favorite thing about this course are the slide decks. Finishing this course I will not be 100% proficient in STATA but that is okay. I now have a collection of slide deck materials that walk me through all of the essential STATA functions. I know I will be coming back to these for semesters to come." - In response to Q9: "Please comment on the strongest aspects of this course." (8/9 responded)

• "The professor and the assignments. She is very good at giving feedback and responding to questions both in class and through email." - In response to Q9: "Please comment on the strongest aspects of this course." (8/9 responded)

• "I think that the instructor's feedback was the strongest aspect of the course. We had frequent assignments that forced us to continually practiced what we were learning in class. I think this method really ensured that we learned the language. Throughout the entire process, the instructor was there to provide guidance. She went out of her way to provide tips that would be helpful throughout our long assignments. She also commented on any questions, issues, or comments that we made in code. This made her really approachable which allowed me to feel relaxed and comfortable asking her for additional help. This also clarified anything wrong to ensure that these mistakes would not follow me into the next assignments. I also appreciated how timely she was with grading." - In response to Q9: "Please comment on the strongest aspects of this course." (8/9 responded)

*Full student evaluation report available upon request. 

Areas for Improvement

Pacing: A few comments mentioned the lectures feeling rushed, the pacing being too fast, or the course being too short. 

I agree with these comments, and I found that I struggled with balancing how much content there was to cover, while also giving time to work on things in class. This was the first class I taught, and looking back, I would do things completely different. I would post the lectures ahead of time and use class time solely for activities - and to help answer questions. Especially since this was an elective course for upper-level undergraduate students, I think switching the structure to this would be much more engaging. 

Course Content: One comment mentioned the lack of focus on syntax, and another mentioned having more time to trouble-shoot their own code in class. 

I think this touches on something that I neglected when I taught this course - the ability to trouble shoot their own code. I found about half-way through that students would get frustrated when seeing errors, but then not know what to do to move forward. I recall discussing in class how errors are a normal part of coding, and how they can tell you very valuable information - but I think I should have lead with that or touched on it more than once. As for teaching the syntax, I don't think I needed to spend more time focusing on it, necessarily, but instead showed students how to detect issues in their syntax using the error codes.