Here are the complete responses to my survey of students who chose not to do the meta activities. The discussion is in the previous posting.
* I have no good reason for skipping the quizzes. I should have been more focused last semester. My two cents on the subject would be to make them required.
* I guess the easiest and most honest reason I can give you for not doing them is because they weren’t mandatory and I did not feel that they helped me learn the material the best. I benefited much more from reading the chapters and doing the study guides that were provided with the book. I would imagine that since you feel so strongly about using them as a learning tool, in order to benefit your students the most you should make them mandatory next year. Also, even though extra credit is an excellent incentive, I barely had time this semester to do my assigned work because my classes were all very demanding and I had to decide how I was going to budget my time.
* Sure, I can answer your questions. At the beginning of the semester, (when i actually had time) the material wasn’t that difficult to understand. As the year progressed, Music Theory began taking up most if not all of my time. It was more of a time issue. I would have liked to do some of them, but actually getting the chance to sit at my computer for that length of time was difficult. I would have definately done them if they were for a grade. Unfortunately in this situation, graded material takes priority over nongraded material.
* The main reason that I didn’t do that meta’s and the online quizzes was not because I wasn’t interested in the material nor any fault of your own, but mostly because almost all of my time was consumed by chemistry and biology. By the time I got to my other subjects I was so burnt out, which is a horrible realization, but after a long day of school and practice and hours in the library doing chemistry and biology I just couldn’t do more than the necessary work.
* I felt that I could learn the material simply by listening in lecture and by reading the book. Any questions on the material could be answered by the book or by asking in class. The activitives take a good amount of time which I spent doing many other things. One suggestion for a way I feel might improve the class is to have some other assingments besides just test. Maybe some group work for credit.
* The meta activities just seemed tedious. I feel like I was able to learn and comprehend the material better by reading through the book and taking notes. When I’m reviewing the information I usually make sure I can define important terms and understand important theories and either take note of the examples used in the text or try to relate the concepts to other real word examples; which I believe is what you wanted us to do with the meta activities, except I just went over it in my head rather than writing it all down. The costs, for me, outweighed the benefits I suppose.
* I chose to study in another fashion. After reading the material I made an outline from the text. I have attached an example to illustrate my point. The format I used was not that established by you, rather I used the format of the book so that by reviewing my outlines I was able to remember where that information was included in the book. [N.B. This student barely passed the course.]
* I attempted every meta activity, except the last envi policy one. I felt that the metas were more beneficial for reviewing and studying for the material becuase it was what was actually covered in class. The interactive quizzes contained material that was not developed in class and it was confusing to try to figure out which material should be emphasized.
* I didnt do many interactive quizzes because they were kind of discouraging. In actuality some of the questions on the quizzes made the material more difficult to understand than you just explaining them. Although besides that, I really should have done them more because the extra credit is a great incentive. The meta cognitive activites i decided the first day that i would never do. I guess i was just lazy or something, but i just never wanted to do it. The example we did didnt clear up how to do them, and i never did quite understand how to do them. But then, since i never had a desire to do them, i guess it doesnt really matter anyhow.
* I did do the quizzes, right before the final if that counts for anything. I did not do the meta activities however (well, I might have done the first one, I honestly can not remember) to be honest they confused me and the concept I did not quite get. Is that a good reason or an excuse? Heck no! But it is the truth.
* I thought that I did the larger majority of meta activities.
AMENDMENT: This response just came in.
* Actually, I did most of the metas and the quizzes. however, I used them primarily as a way of studying the week before a test. [N.B. He didn’t turn any in.] Reflecting on that, it was probably a bad idea. p.s.; thank you for a great semester. i had a good time and even though my class participation might not have reflected it, i thoroughly enjoyed the class.
