^Students DO write positive or neutral comments. The questionnaire asks what they liked, what they disliked, and what suggestions they have to improve the course. Most had at least some positive thing to say, and some said they didn’t dislike anything and had no suggestions to improve, since they thought it was fine. My tech students tend to have more positive comments, since they are more mature and more engaged with the material. They also have the other tech faculty to compare me to by that time. One semester I got “she’s badass” (a compliment, apparently!).
This spring, the majority of the complaints seem to be on the “read then assign” approach, and the large amount of homework. All the physics dept professors got complaints regarding the amount of homework in their courses. Some students seem to think that a 100-level course is supposed to be “easy”, but the Calculus based intro physics are some of the most difficult for anyone. The Algebra-based physics is much easier, but if your algebra skills are non-existent, you will not think so.