U Iowa Home Page

Political Science

Contact Info

347 Schaeffer Hall

319-335-2348

timothy-hagle@uiowa.edu

Twitter: @ProfHagle

Spring 2025 Office Hours

Tue & Th: 4:45-6:15

Mailing Address

Dept of Political Science

341 Schaeffer Hall

20 E. Washington Street

The University of Iowa

Iowa City, Iowa 52242

Posted syllabi for Fall 2025 courses (POLI:3101 and POLI:3121)

Posted updates to 12 papers in Iowa Voting Series for 2024 election data

Posted evaluations for Fall 2024 courses (POLI:3101 and POLI:3121)

Posted updated Prelaw FAQ for UI students

Posted evaluations for Spring 2024 courses (POLI:1120 and POLI:3120).

New Book, Riding the Caucus Rollercoaster 2024, published in paperback and for Kindle devices.

New Book, Supreme Court Agenda Setting: The Warren Court, published for Kindle devices and computers with Kindle reader.

Published updated and expanded edition of Prelaw Advisor in paperback and for Kindle readers

My books

$9.99 Kindle ebook

This page contains the responses to my old questionnaire that I used for courses taught prior to the Fall 2015 semester. 

Below are the questions I ask on my evaluation form.  I don't include here the questions dealing with my teaching assistant.  After the options for each question are the results for that question.  Note: Unlike the ACE forms, the order of the options varies.  This means that the "best" option is not always first or always last.  As a result, sometimes a lower number indicates "better" performance and sometimes a higher number does.  (I should also note that on the form I distribute the options are labeled a, b, c, d, and e.  I've entered them below as numbers because that's the way the computer output interprets them and it makes it easier to examine the summary statistics if I leave them in that form.)  After the results for some questions I've added a few comments (in italics) regarding that question or the results for it.

I've recently changed the format of this page to make it easier to enter the information and to compare responses across semesters.  As a result, each line in the table contains the data for one semester.  I provide the N for the submitted evaluations (which is usually lower than the number in the course due to absences) and the mean for the responses.

There are fewer evaluations for this course than my others because I had not taught it for about nine years prior to Spring 2004.

The number of students who filled out the evaluation for F 2014 seems odd.  There were about 40 in the class and I'm sure more than 18 were present the day of evaluations.  (I announce evaluations in advance via email, so everyone knows when we will do them.)  Apparently several people left without filling out the form.

1.  How many class periods did you miss during the semester?

1. 0-1
2. 2-4
3. 5-8
4. 9-12
5. more than 12

Obviously coming to class is a good thing.  The students responding here may be accurately indicating their attendance, but it probably overestimates that of the entire class.  My experience is that on any given day I'll have about 70% of the students present.  The students not present the day I did evaluations were probably the ones that skipped more often.  

2.  How prepared were you for class (on average)?

1. read and outlined all materials
2. read all materials and made notes in books
3. read all materials
4. read materials before test
5. relied on class notes

For 30:116 and 30:158 I suggest that closer to 1 is better.  Those courses have more case materials and I follow the main texts pretty closely.  For this course the readings are more background materials and the class notes are really the key to getting the material.  As such, although it would be good for everyone to read the background materials before lectures, relying on the class notes isn't as much of a bad thing for this course so I've changed the target for this question to 3.

3.  How many hours did you spend per week preparing for class?

1. none
2. 1-3
3. 4-6
4. 7-9
5. 10 or more

I remember someone telling me that students should expect to spend about three hours preparing for a class for each hour they spend in class. For a three credit class this should mean about 10 hours per week of study time. That's probably a bit much and the time spent will depend on how difficult the material is to the individual student.  My feeling is that this course is a bit easier than 30:158, and quite a bit easier than 30:116, but overall I would be happier if the mean was something above 3.  

4.  How often did you make comments in class?

1. quite often
2. fairly often
3. sometimes
4. a few times
5. never

This class is mostly lecture, so the amount of comments are less than 30:116, or even 30:158.  Moreover, unlike 30:158 I don't follow a text.  I do stop to ask for questions on a regular basis, but, as one student commented to my TA, because they are getting most of the information the first time in class they don't have time to think about what questions they might like to ask.  That seems reasonable, though doing the background readings first should give folks more of a heads up for most of the material. Plus, they have an extensive set of study questions they can use for each class period.  Still, for this class changing the target to 3 rather than 1 is probably a more realistic goal.

5.  How often did you speak with (or email) the instructor (not the TA) about your coursework or other problems with the course?

1. never
2. 1-2 times
3. 3-4 times
4. 5-6 times
5. 7 or more time

I say that closer to 5 is better, but it's probably more like 3.  If a lot of students were coming to me with problems more than 7 times during the semester it might indicate a fundamental problem with the course.  On the other hand, if a lot of students never speak with me it might mean several things.  On the negative side it might mean that the students find me unapproachable.  Although this is undoubtedly true of a few students each semester, on the whole it does not seem to be a problem.  On the positive side, it might mean that everything about the course is sufficiently clear that the students don't need to speak with me.  Again, this is probably true of several students each semester.  (My own experience as an undergrad was that I usually did not need to speak with the instructor in a fair number of classes, particularly the larger ones.)  A third possibility is that the students spoke with the TA (in larger classes) rather than me.  Even if a professor is not necessarily "unapproachable," students sometimes feel more comfortable speaking with the TA.

6.  If you spoke with the instructor, how well did he answer your questions or comments?

1. very well
2. fairly well
3. satisfactorily
4. poorly
5. very poorly

<

One problem in responding to student questions and concerns is that if you don't give the answer the student wants to hear it may be considered a "poor" response when it's actually very fair under the circumstances.  Still these scores seems pretty good.  An interesting point regarding the results for this question is that the number of students who said they didn't speak with me in the previous question should have skipped this one, but several fail to do so each semester. (F 2008 was the first class to get it about right!)  I had problems with a couple of students in F 2008, which might explain the two "very poorly" choices.  They are likely students who made negative comments in the written section for F 2008.

7.  How prepared was the instructor for class?

1. unprepared
2. somewhat prepared
3. moderately prepared
4. quite prepared
5. very prepared

As mentioned above, I had not taught this course for nine years prior to Spring of 2004.  Although I spent a lot of time prior to the start of the semester updating the material, there were still changes and updates I had to make during the semester (and this is true every semester).  Even so, I never come to class without being fully prepared for the daily topic.  Just the same, I often get one or two students who think I was unprepared.  It would be nice to know what they thought was missing.

8.  How well did the instructor answer questions in class?

1. very poorly
2. somewhat poorly
3. adequately
4. fairly well
5. very well

The score here is fairly consistent with those in 30:158 for this question.

9.  Did the instructor encourage class participation?

1. very much
2. quite a bit
3. somewhat
4. not much
5. never

As mentioned in question 4 above, the course is mainly based on lectures with the reading largely background material.  One student told my TA (for a larger class) that they were so busy getting the lecture material that they didn't have time to think about questions on the spot.  Although that's something to work on, it's still good to see that they noticed that I was at least trying to get them to participate. F 2008 seems an exception.  Some semesters the students just aren't interested in participating in discussions.  I always like to take questions to further explain the material, but when I try to get participation by throwing out a question and get dead air in response I tend to stop trying that method. I see a bit of a pattern for teh 2008 and 2010 semesters in that the students in the larger Spring classes seem to think I encourage participation more than those in the smaller Fall classes. That shouldn't make a difference to me, but there's usually more participation in the larger classes just because there are likely to be more people who are willing to discuss something, so the actual amount of discussion may affect the perception of whether I encourage it. Interesting.

10.  How interested were you in learning the course material?

1. not interested
2. somewhat interested
3. moderately interested
4. fairly interested
5. very interested

About 95% of the students who take this class (and 30:116 and 30:158) in the regular session are either planning on or thinking about attending law school (less when I teach this course in the Saturday and Evening program).  As such they certainly ought to be interested in the material.  

11.  How much did you learn in this course?

1. quite a bit
2. a lot
3. some
4. not much
5. nothing

The numbers are pretty good here, and are consistent with those from 30:158.

12.  How many of the basic terms necessary for an understanding of the material did you learn?

1. all
2. most
3. some
4. a few
5. none

I have the students purchase a law dictionary but this course doesn't contain the concentration of legal terms that my other courses do.  This question is really a check to see how motivated the students have been.

13.  Were you challenged by this course?

1. very much
2. quite a bit
3. somewhat
4. a little
5. not at all

The material in this course is more straight forward than in either 30:158 or 30:116, so I'm a little surprised that the score is as low as it is (i.e., that they think it was so challenging).  Then again, the emphasis on lectures with the readings mainly background materials may have been different from what students have been used to.

14.  How do you feel about the amount of material covered in this course?

1. way too much
2. a bit too much
3. about right
4. not enough
5. way too little

This question is structured so that the middle score is "best."  I say closer to 3 is "better," but my preference would be about 2.5.  I certainly wouldn't want to overload the students with so much work that they end up not doing any of it, but I also want to get them to work.    

15.  Did the instructor present the material fairly and not give too much emphasis to one point of view or the other?

1. very fair
2. quite fair
3. somewhat fair
4. somewhat unfair
5. very unfair

Now that I have tenure I often tell students my political inclinations in the first or second class period.  I also tell them that for purposes of the course, it doesn't matter whether they either agree with me or with the opinions of the authors that we read.  What does matter is that they understand the arguments.  A couple of students usually make some mention of this in the written comments, but they rarely provide specific examples.

16.  How well did the first test cover the topics to be tested?

1. very well
2. fairly well
3. adequately
4. poorly
5. very poorly

The tests in this course aren't as difficult as those in my other courses, even though they are still multiple choice.  The one thing that might have caused some problems was that there tended to be a lot of lists in the lectures: three of this, five of that, and so on.  Sometimes the lists were important as a set of options to some problem or situation, but often they were more a way for me to group items in a related subject area so that the notes were more organized.  I tell students to not worry about the lists as such, but some may have had more difficulty on the test if they were focusing on memorizing all the lists.

17.  Did the paper assignment aid in your understanding or ability to analyze concepts presented in the course?

1. very much
2. quite a bit
3. somewhat
4. a little
5. not at all

In 30:116 and 30:158 I give the students a factual situation and they need to use course cases and concepts to analyze it.  The assignment in this course was more traditional, and seemed to get mixed results.  Some liked the more traditional approach, others indicated that they preferred the chance to actually apply the course concepts.  The material in this course doesn't lend itself to the fact situation approach, so this aspect of the course will continue to take the more familiar approach to paper assignments.

18.  How do you feel about the collection of readings?

1. too easy
2. easy
3. about right
4. a bit difficult
5. too difficult

<There were a lot of readings for the course, but much of it was background material and I highlighted the particularly important material in class.  The readings themselves were often pieces that originally appeared as newspaper or magazine articles, so they were more straight forward reading.

19.  Did the study questions help you to understand the course concepts and material?

1. not at all
2. minimally helpful
3. somewhat helpful
4. fairly helpful
5. very helpful

A several years ago I began including an extensive (600+) set of study questions in the course pack.  My inspiration for such a large set was my high school government teacher (Mr. Griggs) who always gave us such lists prior to tests.  The basic idea of such a large list was that if one could work through all the questions he or she should do well on the test.  Another purpose of the questions is to give the students more examples of the kinds of questions I want them to be thinking about as they go through the material.  I also recommend that students get together in groups to discuss the questions (which contain many hypotheticals).     

20.  Do you think the concepts and information you learned in this course will be valuable to you in the future?

1. very helpful
2. fairly helpful
3. somewhat helpful
4. minimally helpful
5. not at all helpful

Again, most of the students in this class (during regular sessions) plan on law school, so it should be helpful to them (and if they don't see it, then they will soon be in big trouble!).  Even so, I tell the students that the course will likely be even more important for those not planning on law school because it may be the only time they will learn about several of the topics in the course in an organized way.  It's good to see that most of the students realize this.

21.  On the whole, would you recommend this instructor to other students?

1. very strongly
2. fairly strongly
3. yes
4. yes with reservations
5. no

This is the BIG question.  This question is the general overall evaluation of my course.  Given the difficulty of the course, it's good to see that the vast majority would recommend me to others.  There are usually several 4s each semester.  In various past semesters I've had students tell me that they would recommend me and my classes to others, but that they would emphasize that it's a lot of work, which is certainly a fair assessment.  I suppose this may mean that a 4 is not all that negative of a response.  There was more unhappiness in F 2008.  A couple of students had critical written comments so I'll comment on them in the written section.

22.  Approximately what grade do you think you will receive in this course?

1. A
2. B
3. C
4. D
5. F

I've often wondered whether a student's perception of how he or she is doing in a course affects the evaluation.  I don't try to correlate the responses between this question and the previous one, but I do look at the general trend between the two.  On the whole I think the students underestimate their performance in the course.  I realize that the average perceived grade is above a B (and for most semester in my courses no one responds with less than a C) but I suspect that most of the students who are not doing well in the course tend not to show up on a regular basis.  (Note: Apparently this item wasn't scored for F 2007, so I just entered zeroes for that semester.)