Here are my student ratings and comments from each semester in which I have taught a course. The comments posted are all of the comments from the university rating system that I received for that particular semester. My goal in posting these is that my quest for becoming a more excellent teacher is an open, thoughtful quest in which student evaluations and comments are carefully considered. If you have any suggestions or comments, please email me.
Each semester I teach, I try something new that I think will help the students. Often these ideas involve incorporating writing and technology in the classroom. For example, I have tried online reading quizzes, collaborative wiki writing assignments, weekly journals, writing assignments involving quizzes, tests, and other material, splitting up the homework assignments, etc. Most semesters have turned out wonderfully. Some semesters were great learning experiences in which I learned better how to adapt to situations I hadn’t taught in before. It’s been a great experience to reflect on what has and hasn’t worked and how I can build upon the successful experiences and eliminate the less successful experiences.
To see the syllabus and other materials for each course, please visit the Courses home page.
Here are student ratings I have received on the end-of-course ratings for each of the courses I have taught: Jason_Grout-Student_Ratings.pdf.
One semester in particular deserves a comment. The Fall 2006 semester I taught College Algebra in a large-lecture format (6 combined sections, 150+ students). It was my first time teaching a class in this format and I learned much about adapting successful small-class techniques to large lectures. Unfortunately, my student ratings reflect my inexperience in teaching in a large-lecture format. I expect to do much better the next time I teach a course in this format. The section from which I have included the student rating sheet seemed to reflect the average rating across all 6 sections (some sections rated me higher, some rated me lower).
Below are all the student comments I have received on the end-of-course ratings for all of the courses I have taught. These comments have not been edited in any way. In bold, I have noted some of the changes I have made in response to this feedback. This is an ongoing project, so the most recent semester’s comments may not be available yet.
Mathematics is not a course generally described as fun; it is most often barely tolerated. Jason was able to help us learn through interaction and his amazing ability to explain difficult concepts in a way that was understandable. He made the learning process enjoyable. He also made himself available to help us as students on assignments; he stayed after office hours and explained concepts to us and helped us work through problems one on one. His love for the subject and the students truly shines through!
Great teacher! Always there when we needed help.
It has been a blast! Thanks for being such a stupendous teacher and thanks for all the effort and care you gave your students!
Good teacher that made Calculus fun, even though it was everyday.
Some of the assignments were a little long, and it seemed like sometimes the assignments were easier than the tests (i.e.-chapter 3). But the book was a good challenge. The tests were just a harder challenge, making it kinda hard to do.
Jason was a great instructor. he really loves what he does and he was a great teacher for the course. I thought the course was way too hard
Massive time consuming home work is fustrating. IT’s totally not your fault but I just can’t help falling asleep when I can’t follow those “somehow doesn’t make sense to me” language on the board anymore.
I now implement a homework assignment system that cuts down on the homework that is just mindless drudgery. On many repetitive exercises, once a student understands the material, they are free to skip the rest of the problem.
the course was very challenging, but i learned a great deal. Jason was an excellent instructor who knew the material and genuinly cared for the students he was teaching.
I think lots of thought should be given to giving answers to the homework. Some people learn differently than others. I feel that providing the solutions to the homework can help students to teach themselves as opposed to relying on math lab tutors or the teacher.
I now make sure that students have access to solutions (either in a solutions manual or my handwritten solutions) as they work out problems. I encourage them not to look at the answers before they have seriously attempted the problems, though.
My teacher was really excited about Calculus which was good, he really tried to get us to love calculus as well. He was a good teacher and helped us understand the material. And though the book was not that great he overcame that and taught me a lot this semester.
Jason Grout is the best Math teacher I have ever had. The problem in the course is that you never know where you stand as your grades are concerned. It is very frustrating and stressful.
I now try to give out comprehensive grade sheets several times during the semester detailing every grade I have recorded and their current percentage in the class, along with some class-wide statistics.
So far so good. You are a good teacher. The biggest problem I have with the class is the textbook; it doesn’t teach me anything. But keep up what you are doing – if you can teach well enough that students don’t need to go to the math lab or reread the section in the book, you can be able to teach anything.
Jason was an excellent teacher! I learned so much and Calculus makes sense!
Jason is an excellent teacher. He truly cares about his students and has a domination of the material that he teaches. I wish all Math teachers were as useful as he is. I truly have enjoyed my time in his class.
this is the hardest class i have ever taken. But the teacher was also one of the best I have ever had at BYU.
I liked Jason Grout as a teacher
This guy rocks! He’ll will be and he is a superstar of a math teacher. He combines immense concern for students with a relentless determination to get all the topics covered. I really liked this class, with absolutely no weight of this liking going to the material. I learned a lot. He gave me mercy on occasion, but never let me expect it. That said, one thing he could improve upon is communication with the students. The web site used to relay due dates of assignments and such had a few errors over the semester. This resulted in me not being prepared once or twice, and on the flip side I spent many hours on several assignments, only to find out that they weren’t due till a later date. The only other thing would be the limit proofs. I suggest teaching it like you did, and then making a sheet with the basic proof and some pointers, etc, on how to do them. Also, make it clear that limit proofs (and maybe proofs in general) are more of a “description of a tool” than a real tool that you must use. I think you know of what you speak.
Prof. Grout is a great man. I think that with more experience, he will become a great instructor. Prof. Grout is very knowledgeable. I can’t say I would take a class from him in the near future, but perhaps in a few years when he is more experienced.
I’m not sure I would have made it through the class if I had not had Jason (massa) grout as a teacher. Thanks, you made me feel like I meant something to the class.
Jason, thank you, this was a wonderful class. There may be better teachers at explaning concepts, but as far as a teacher, I felt you cared about how the class did, there was a care and personal bond with the class that I have rarly felt elsewhere, and for this I would seriously consider taking the class. You are very approchable, and I feel comfortable asking for help. Added to this, your explaing of concepts is good. The class was good, my experience was great. Thanks Brother Grout for all your work, care, and help, thank you so much, it all makes a difference for me individually.
Very good instructor. I feel more prepared then ever due to his teaching style. I feel that the graded material didn’t really show how much I know. But I am greatful for the amount of suplimentary work I received above and beyond the homework. And recognize that Jason Grout put an acceptional amount of time into this course to help the students.
Awesome instructor, really cares about his students. Makes his students feel like he is working for him and on his side, opposed to working against them. He really sacrifces his time for his students. I’m so glad i got him for an instructor, much better than other professors from what i’ve heard. Some of the tests were a little too difficult i felt, but thats the only complaint
Jason Grout was an awesome teacher. He was very excited about what he did and explained things so well. His teaching skills surpass many I have learned from and he really makes sure that we understand and gives us opportunities to get help. He involves us well and doesn’t just stand at the board lecturing. I really enjoyed his class.
Brother Grout was an exceptional teacher and friend to all his students. He tried hard to help us understand and also to give us chances to ask questions and learn. The one suggestion I have is partial credit on multiple choice I have had many 6-10 pt questions that I knew how to do yet I miss all because of a small mathematical mistake... thank you brother grout!
I have cut down on the number of multiple-choice questions on a test.
I feel very blessed to have gotten the teacher I did. Brother Grout was very responsive to my particular needs. I strongly feel that he wanted each of his students to understand Calculus and do well in his class and in life in general. He was willing to do whatever was necessary for his students to understand the subject. I can’t think of any way that Brother Grout could have been a better teacher.
I did not like how the exams tested for speed. I think the quizes would work fine for this. The exams should be evaluating how well we learned the subject matter, not how fast we can do it.
Brother Grout is a great teacher!! The only thing I disliked about the course was how the material in the homework from the material on tests.
I now hand out a study guide before each test which lists the important concepts in the material. The test study guide also references specific homework and review problems. I then write the test to assess exactly the items on the test study guide.
even thought this class is super tough, ive been able to learn skills in not giving up and trying really hard to get what i want.
I think Jason was a great teacher. He did a great job of showing interest in the students and in their learning. I enjoyed the class, but not the subject.
Jason Grout was a great instructor. He made the concepts seem easy, and gave me confidence in myself that I could do the homework and assignments.
Thanks for helping this semester be interesting! You did an excellent job!
Great teaching really interested in the success of the students. Too much busy work and very difficult grader.
I now implement a homework assignment system that cuts down on the homework that is just mindless drudgery. On many repetitive exercises, once a student understands the material, they are free to skip the rest of the problem.
Thank for for everything Brother Grout!
He is the best teacher ever!
I like how the main purpose he had was for us to learn the material not to weed us out.
Brother Grout was an excellent teacher for this calculus class. He made the classes fun and interesting as well as doing a great job teaching and explaining difficult concepts. He always tried to be invloved with the students and wanted this course to be the best it could be.
Brother Grout is an amazing teacher! He clearly presents the material. I love the way that he tried to help us understand why things happened the way they did and where theorems came from. I believe that is an important part of the learning process. In addition, he was always willing to help us and he loved what he did. Two thumbs up for the class, Brother Grout, but not really for the book. It was hard to understand and learn from!!! I believe the book is helpful for math majors, but maybe not those of us who don’t think in proofs all the time:)
This class had about 35 students. It was a pretty intense semester with a lot of material to cover. I taught one of the small sections, while most students in the course were in a large-lecture format taught by another teacher. After the first test, in response to student comments, I concentrated on making the expectations for the course and the tests extremely clear. I think that worked well (you can see the test study guides on the course website, for example). We had short multiple-choice reading quizzes due before material was covered in class.
Jason is an awesome teacher! I really learned a lot in this class and everything we did for homework, quizzes, tests and such was very beneficial. I was also able to develop good study habits because of this class. Thanks Jason!
Must harder on us than other instructors. This whole graduate student thing is a sticky subject. There is too wide of a gap between classes and their structure. You sign up for a class and get stuck with the instructor that is ridiculously hard to understand, and you have no choice. You have no idea who it is until you walk in to the class room. I did not like this class at all.
Thank you so much for the great classes! Although I hated math, I like this class so much, and because of this class, I like math much more than before. The lecutre is so comprehensive, and everyone in the class get involved into the lecture because everyone likes your lecure. In addition, I appreciate your work in math lab. Thank you for everything!
This is one of your better prof. in the math department. Although it was a difficult subject, Jason did a good job. Course was very fair and Jason was accommodating to the learning speed of the class. Textbook is good as well. Someone give Jason a raise, he deserves one.
I had difficulty understanding how the course was supposed to work and how Professor Grout was going to teach us. Once the pattern was developed, however, I was very appreciative of the individual attention he gave to each memeber of the class. I was glad that he was so respectful of each student, and was very encouraging in helping you when you didn’t understand things. Thank you.
It was a good class. It was a challenge for me. Prof. Grout is a really good teacher!
Wonderful teacher, tough grader but he really cares about the students and does all he can to prepare them.
this class was hard and taught sepeartley from the other 119 courses. jason wrote his own tests and moved at his own pace. it seemed to move too fast; however he compensated for when we werent understanding and would spend an extra day explaining what we felt lost on. i felt his grading was a little unfair–i would get the answer right and do the work appropriatley however somewhere along the line i left off a paranthese or didnt change the units in the work but changed them in the answer and yet he still marked me down.(very nitpicky) you can tell he loves math and is excited to teach the class. somethimes i felt he spent too much time explaining how you get the equation, all the math that we didnt need to know that got to the equation, instead of focusing on how to use it. sometimes he wasnt a very effetive teacher. i have learned a lot though and jason was willing to help us whenever he could–he put in a lot of time for the class.
He made the course a little harder than most Professors and might have been a little overzealous in his approach, but he is an excellent teacher and has pure and righteous intentions.
Brother Grout was a good teacher, and he knows alot about calculus however, he spent too much time during class explaining why the math concepts made sense instead of showing us how to actually work the problems.
Although I still really try to emphasize how something works, I am also trying to do better at doing concrete examples.
Jason was a good insturctor, he understood the material very well and was able to convay it to the rest of the class. Although some times it took awhile to get to the important stuff and it made it more confusing. Jason is a good teacher. He is honest and cares for each student. The material is difficult and there seemed to be no mercy as to the speed of the material given. More focus should be given on basic calculus and not as much on sections that “might pertain” to some situation in life. I believe that Calc 119 could be a better and more useful class if it focused on application material that truely applies to life and not to specific intense occupations.
This class was about 30 students. We used the MyMathLab Course Compass software in this course. To supplement the online coursework part, we had reading quizzes before the material was covered. The class dynamics were great and we had a lot of fun learning the math.
Brother Grout wants to help students learn and that is shown through his willingness to help in class and by making himself very available for out of class help.
Jason is an awesome instructor! He really cares about his students. He was very willing to work with us even if it was not his office hours. Jason made math not so awful.
Good teacher, but i did not like how the course was structured. It is too divided between online home work that you can fake your way through and the time between when a concept was taught and the homework for that concept was due was to long. By the time the homework was due, i had to reteach myself the concepts.
The homework for this semester was due two class periods after we covered the section in class. The idea was to give the class one class period and a couple of office hours to ask questions. As always, I encourage the students to start their homework early.
Great teacher just too much busy work
Brother Grout has a great heart, was really very willing to go out of his way to help students. The class was lacking some organization, it took a while before everyone knew what was expected from them for this course.
job well done on your first year’s experience. You’ll make an excellent math teacher!! I learned a great deal from the class.
the class seemed very disorganized. The homework policies changed quite a bit. I really disliked the online course compass approach to the class. As for the instructor, he wasn’t a very good teacher, he knows the material, but doesn’t explain and teach very well. you can tell that he is a mathmetician and doesn’t understand how other students and people think.
At first, I was ambitious about the amount of work that we would do during the semester. In particular, I had wanted to have more writing assignments and quizzes. However, especially after listening to the students, I felt that it was too much work, so I backed off from the original plans.
Jason Grout really helped out and was available to us when we needed him.
I was given the opportunity to teach this course a short time before the spring 2006 semester started. The course had around 40 students and lecture was held 2 hours MWF over 7 weeks (half of a normal semester). I divided the homework into two parts—part A dealt with calculations and helped the students develop proficiency and confidence, while part B dealt with why things work and built on the intuition developed in the part A homework. I also had the students read the text and take an online reading quiz by the time the part B homework was due. They were asked to state a few main points from the section and asked for a question or two over the material. I couldn’t find online quiz systems that did what I wanted, so I modified an open-source online survey system to be an online quiz system.
I had a great time in this course helping the students and I felt that the class as a whole had a great semester.
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If I could, I would take every math class from Jason. He is an excellent teacher who knows his subject matter and cares about the students. In fact, he is one of the best instructors I’ve had, not only in math, but at BYU. He has a very bright future ahead of him. Here are my suggestions about the course: The Leon text book was okay, but it skips a lot of steps and constantly uses the frustrating phrase “it is easy to see...”. I occasionally referred to the text by Anton and found it to be much more helpful. I am not gifted in math and after a semester of hard work and below average test scores, I am a bit worried about my grade in this class. I thought that the reading quizzes were brilliant and having A and B parts to homework were a good idea. However, I felt like the text and the class time really never prepared me to handle part B homework. Additionally, the tests had a lot of proofs on them, but class time focused on computations. I think that class time should prepare students for homework and tests. If the test is 1/3 proofs, spend 1/3 of the time in class on proofs.
Splitting the homework into two parts (A and B) was an idea developed with Ben Woodruff and Casey Johnson in previous semesters. The idea is that the first homework deals with computational tools and develops the student’s skills and confidence. The second part delves deeper into why things work and rely on the student being comfortable with the calculations and developing intuition from working problems.
Jason is full of ideas to make the learning experience meaningful, with the reading quizzes, parts A and B homework, quizzes, fixing missed problems and re-submitting, etc. They are excellent ideas, but are hard to put into practice and keep up as an instructor. For example, I had hoped to correct my quiz 2 for half credit, but never got it back. I really had no idea how my reading quizzes were being scored and if I needed to improve so I could be sure to get the points I REALLY need. With the grader jumping ship midway through the semester, I think Jason came up with a reasonable way of accounting for homework, but it was still an imperfect system that really didn’t allow you to receive credit for all of your effort. Then, on the last day of class, we got several assignments back with no scores which, again, mean a lot to me, since I really needs the points. Generally, I am pretty initimidated to work at the board when it comes to math, but I thought that the class atmostphere was one that was helpful and non-critical. I’m not saying that I wish we’d done it more as a class, but I am saying the when it was done, Jason led the class very well. Jason was extremely available for help throughout the semester. He is an exceptional instructor.
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The book is hard to understand. The reader is left to figure out too many of the examples and theorems. Jason shows an unusual level of commitment to helping students outside of class.
Jason was an amazing teacher and he really helped me reason through things. He always made time to help and he never just gave me the answer, but taught me how to think through it. At the start I couldn’t prove anything on my own and now I can even use real math terms.
I wish all the math teachers were as good as Jason. I also felt that even though the tests were hard Jason wrote them at the level he taught and they pushed me, but were reasonable.
Bro Grout was possibly my best math teacher ever.
It would have been a huge help if Blackboard 6 was used to track homework scores, test scores, etc... I know that the grader became unavailable for a while,(about 3 weeks) and it made it hard to know how we were doing, and how to prepare for the tests. I think this would benefit everyone in any class, but especially in a technical class like math.
Please give an approximate grade, so the student can know where they are in the course. At this point, someone could be failing, and they wouldn’t know it.
Though I try to give the students an approximate grade several times in the semester, the contracted schedule of this semester, combined with problems we had with switching graders, made this hard to do this semester.
Jason seemed concerned with helping us learn
I thought that the applications should be used more. I really disliked alot of the theoretical questions and proofs. I deal better with actual matrices rather than saying that we have an mXn matrix.
It didn’t seem like he knew he was going to teach linear algebra enough in advance enough to prepare the lessons well and make sure everything else was running smoothly. There were too many changes in the way things were graded and how homework was handed in. Many assignments were missed for failure to click in or type in reading quizes and he was not very flexible in that. It also seemed like he was in over his head both teaching and doing his research that he had to make a bunch of mid semester changes that really hurt us students. All and all he knew the matiral very well but it was hard to establish the basis of all principles when connections weren’t really made well during class. He was very caring and wanted us to understand it was just really hard for us...well most of us...to understand all he wanted us to. The sylabus was great but wasn’t really followed and those changes really effected us because it was so potent a semester.
I really don’t care for the text book. I have found other texts in the library etc. that are more clear. I did like the applications sections however. I found some of the lectures difficult to follow and re-hashing things that had already been taught by a different method. It seems that a good portion of math instructors are like race car drivers, they get so caught up in their amazement of what they know and what they can do that they do not take a logical approach to math that an ordinary person would understand. It seems strange that the students who do well are the ones in the teacher’s office everyday, shouldn’t the teacher be explaining it to the point that the majority of the students understand it from the lectures and a few may need extra help? Remember, we are not math majors, most of us are engineers and need to know how to apply it, we don’t care that much about the history and the various theories behind a single concept. We like things streamlined to get the job done.
I like having the homework assignments broken up into A and B sections. It was really helpful for me to go over the material on two separate occasions. There were a great deal of problems on the B assignments that I never fully understood. Since I could never make the office hours, I spent alot of time in the math lab, but the TA’s were rarely able to answer my questions, it seems as though very few really know anything about linear algebra. It would be really helpful to have been able to have some time reserved in class to work through some of the more difficult B problems as a class everyday. The exams are also a poor reflection of how well we know the material.
I really enjoyed Jason as a teacher. He explained concepts well and had lecture outlines that flowed extremely well.
Thanks Jason :)
The course itself is challenging, but Jason tried to keep things understandable and kept us involved in the learning. He likes to let us figure our own way around things, but sometimes when we were hanging and not being able to figure out anything that method gets a bit frustrating. It is also my personal opinion that regular quizzes would be more helpful than the reading quizzes–the reading quizzes were a bit of busy work, but an actual quiz helps to show what you have learned/still need to learn.
I am now experimenting with both regular quizzes and reading quizzes.
As I have time, I will be posting and responding to comments from my Fall 2006 College Algebra class. This was a large-lecture format (6 combined sections, 150+ students), and I learned a lot about adapting small-class techniques to large lectures. I look forward to implementing some of the students’ suggestions the next time I teach in such a format.