Teaching Evaluations

	SIO 239             (Winter '94)

• This was an excellent class. The notes/text were essential for my understanding since in lecture large quantities of information were explained very quickly. It was good to have something to look back on to reinforce the ideas.

• The course has been very good. The homework is challenging and helps improve comprehension of material that is covered quickly in class lecture. The professor is extremely helpful one on one for questions and is receptive to making changes that will improve instruction. I think the course could benefit from more summarizing along the way. Many things are taught by example, which is instructive, but makes it difficult to see general applications.

• Mathematically useful topics for geophysics students i.e., stability and accuracy of inverse problems, solutions of actual geophysical examples (normal mode eigenvalue problem, unstable convection system, etc.) and a bit less emphasis on ``super" accuracy might be helpful to geophysics students.

• Glenn's class was interesting, but somewhat overwhelming. He tends to lecture very quickly, so sometimes it is hard to follow what he is doing. It might be good to slow down a bit. He also seems to assume we know more than we actually do, and that adds some difficulty to the understanding of the lectures. In the other hand, I learned quite a bit in the class and most of that came from struggling to understand. So maybe that's a good thing. I want to say that Glenn was extremely patient in answering my dumb questions. He showed a degree of restraint that is nothing short of remarkable.

• Prof. Ierley gives good lectures which are interesting and entertaining.

• The lecturer often lectured with such rapidity that it was difficult to follow the lecture. His lecture notes (which were handed out) were difficult to understand without the student resorting to other sources of knowledge. He gave very little theory pertaining to the things he was trying to explain and proceeded with obscure examples. It is difficult to apply techniques that one has learned without the knowledge of all places that they are applicable. It seems that one can gain this knowledge only by having learned the theory.

• The derivations in the class can be rather difficult, and the approach very original. If we can relax, and try to understand the implications, that is fine. But sometimes I don't know if I should be able to reproduce all this immediately, or not. If so, that would be difficult in the amount of time that we have. But the lecture is fine. I enjoyed it.

• To be fair, I learned a lot, but learning it could have been less painful and if taught differently I might have learned more. Homework was too intricate, by the time I finished each problem, I was so glad to be done and so bogged down by the details of the problem, that I often failed to grasp the main point. It would be better to assign simpler problems, that were not so computer or computative or algebraically intensive. Instead of 3-5 major problems every other week, I would have liked 2-3 easy problems every week where each problem illustrated, or made us apply or think about, one fundamental idea or one basic technique. I would have liked a clear description of an idea or technique learning when to apply (to what kind of problems), how well does it work and what other techniques are also available. Even if such a description is recipe-like it would have been very helpful for the future to have.

	SIO 239             (Winter '95)

• This class is pretty work intensive and the material can be kind of dry.

• Dr. Ierley is the best science professor I have ever had. It was also the most difficult class I have ever taken. But I have a couple criticisms: There were three people in the class doing the assignments and for the first few assignments I sacrificed a lot to get the homeworks done by the due date and was not given back the first assignment until five weeks later. This was because the other two people didn't do them for the longest time. When they were returned, they were all graded the same. That sucked but I'm not bitter because I got a not out o the assignments. The first one anyway. I get the second homework assignment maybe sometime in May (I extrapolated!) The final's in two weeks.

	SIO 219             (Spring '94)

• Terrible jokes. Lectures seemed very scattered.

• The combination of clear explanations and plenty of out of class personal help made this quite difficult material a pleasure to learn. It was clear that he was committed to us learning.

• Strong points: Glenn seemed very interest in teaching well. So interested he asked for feedback on teaching. Very impressive. Then he took it when given - even better! (Example: concentration on big picture to give structure to what we're learning.) Weak points: Needs to start more basic sometimes. Too harsh grading. People shouldn't have to worry about their GPA, they should be able to concentrate on learning. Exams were good though. A bit condescending at the outset. Either I got used to it, or he got better. For example, it should be our motivation that makes us do homework, not his threat of taking points off. Negative reinforcement is for kindergarten. He and Bill Young bickering got old real quick and got in the way of learning. Grow up!