The following comments were typed by Sujata Davis from written student comments. They have been slightly edited to protect the identity of the student. If any students recognize their remarks and wish to have them removed for any reason, please ask Sujata (not the instructor) to remove them.

The comments were given here so that students considering this course can have a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the course and the instructor as perceived by previous students.

Spring 1999

Your overall assessment of the instructor:

• Professor Gould is an enthusiastic teacher with a vast knowledge of the subject. Often times I find the lectures not so detailed, so I often have to seek help outside of class. This course required a lot of working on the computer for long hours. Professor Gould has always been more than willing to help outside of class.
• Prof. Gould does a great job of presenting the material, though sometimes the topics are a little advanced. I would liked to have Prof. Gould explain programming a little more, but eventually I did catch on.
• Prof. Gould knows a lot about his subject. Sometimes his lectures are not too clear but he tries to make sure that everyone understands the material.
• He is an expert in this field. He always tries to keep student thinking. He tries to introduce as many aspects as possible. But he seldom says what I want to know.
• He's very enthusiastic about the subject, particularly since it seems his definition of "interesting" seems to be "has something to do with physics." He's also is a good writer (books and grant proposals), so there was much to learn from him there.
• He really seems to enjoy teaching and his lectures are never dry. Always full of examples from the non-science world (though he doesn't seem to regard social scientists very highly), he really knows how to make his point.

Q: Your overall assessment of this course - for example, what aspects you found most valuable/effective; what aspects, if any, you think need improvement (e.g., structure, readings, exams, written assignments, etc.):

• This course has really helped me gain knowledge on how to apply computers to physics. The lab reports in this course not only helped me in keeping up with the course work, but also helped me improve the quality and presentation of my lab reports.
• I think that the book should be changed. This class only puts forth one viewpt. Often if I did not understand the lecture the book did not help. Having class &and lab 4 times per week is a bit much. Consolidating into 2 -3 mtgs would be better.
• I think that lab reports are really helpful. Actually I like the way this class is structured and usefulness of the reports. I enjoyed doing labs.
• This course gives me a new way of thinking. The course is not perfect but I have no idea how to make it better.
• This was a great course! It was the first time I took a "discussion" course that was actually a discussion. Some students would prefer to take notes from a lecture, but I feel I learned more with this format. It was nice just to carry on a conversation. I was able to learn some physics without taking the tedious intro courses. A good experience.
• We went over a lot of topics of general interest, in the context of physics. Though it is a physics class, Harvey realizes that all of us do not necessarily have the core background in that subject. He is especially good at using the final project to tune the student's interests in other topics and use the skills acquired in this class.

• Professor Gould has the ability to simplify everything in such a way that you can understand it. I think he is an excellent professor.

• I think Prof. Gould is one of the most enthusiastic professors I have seen at Clark. It comes through very clearly that he loves his work. He is very warm and has a distinct sense of humor. If I knew anything about Physics, I would w/o hesitation call him a great professor. However, not knowing much about anything related to Physics at all, I find it difficult to follow his lectures at times. Yet, overall, I was glad to have met such a bright and lively instructor, totally dedicated to science and his students whom he seems to sincerely love and respect. Also it is admirable that he is aware of the capacity of each student in his class and does not expect everyone to be at the same level.

• Harvey Gould is an effective professor who does a great job of teaching material to students with varied backgrounds. His availability outside of class and his flexibility has been a great help to those of us whose backgrounds are comparatively weak. His organization of the course in terms of the schedule and impromptu quizzes to access our knowledge of the concepts was not well done.

• Prof Gould is useless. The class itself serves no purpose. He is of no help in any thing having to do with the class. He gives you the book and expects everyone to know exactly what is going on without any useful instruction. He is by far one of the worst professors I have ever had.

• Dr Gould wrote an excellent book. He has a lot of enthusiasm for helping students.

• Good, handwriting difficult to read.

• The instructor did a good job.

• Prof. Gould is friendly and an excellent prof. However, at times, his explanations are confusing.

• Excellent.

• Good critical thinker with a lot to teach. Allows students to pursue individual interests, which is very nice, but sometimes the class period itself became unstructured - students did not have questions to ask, and there was no specific lesson plan; the professor's breadth of knowledge allowed him to improvise reasonably well in such situations. The professor has an entire world of ideas in his head, and good ones, but sometimes this made it difficult for him to listen to students, and have patience in hearing what they are trying to say.

• He's a nifty teacher to have, but at times somewhat perplexing in his explanations. The TA is very helpful and knowledgeable and at the same time less perplexing.

  Prof. Gould is an active instructor. His teaching shows unbridled enthusiasm for the subject matter. His instruction in class shows unprecedented love for the subject. He also shows genuine care for the students.

• Very good.

• He is smart and kind. His lecture didn't give us a lot of knowledge that we should know. He answered our questions carefully and effectively, but why did we always had have lots of questions? Maybe he should summarize the essence and give us a clear point to the topics.

  Although he knows his subject matter exceptionally well and is an experienced instructor, a bit more planning and organization would improve the quality of the course and make the course more effective for the wide spectrum of students.

• He is a good teacher.

• Prof. Gould has helped me think of physics in new ways. His teaching style is informal and facilitates discussion about the subject matter.

  Harvey is a brilliant professor and sometimes expects his students to be the same. He is quite helpful once approached but intimidating to approach. He is enthusiastic about students work only if he wants to be. What I am trying to say is that Harvey can be a good instructor if he wants to. I like the textbook though.

  Harvey's course by itself is quite interesting, however Harvey himself is not really involved with the student learning about simulation. In fact, I think I learned more from the T.A. (Greg) than I did from Harvey. This course requires the teacher to spend a fair amount of time with students explaining the new concepts, etc. - and I think Harvey does not have that sort of spare time to be an effective teacher.

  Dr. Gould's relation to the book is such that he cannot see the flaws. He could only see flaws in my lab reports. It is the opinion of your humble narrator that although he cares about the students, he is unable to convey that in any meaningful or convincing way.

• The only thing I would suggest is the assignment of more reference material for the particular topics covered.

• This is a great course for those interested in using the computer to simulate physical phenomena. However, I had the misconception that it could be molded towards any major that had nothing to do with science, such as the Arts. Still, I enjoyed reviewing my high school Physics and learning a lot of new things and at the same time improving my computer simulation skills. I wish the course could be a little more structured with more guidance during the labs. Because I personally didn't know so much about Physics, being left to my own wasn't always productive.

• It will be more helpful to have a few quizzes during the semester and more readings outside of the text.

• The class is pointless. Nothing covered in the entire semester has anything to do with physics. The course description says "no computer programming is assumed." However it is vital to the class material. The lectures serve no purpose but to waste time. The class and its instructor should be dropped.

• The class needs better exposition of the topics before the assignments are given.

• The course is wonderful, especially the lab. The lecture was not so helpful sometimes.

• Good. The lecture should take a little more weight and should be more organized.

• Useful course.

• The course setting is different. The discussion is a good idea, but a certain amount of lecture is a good idea. It's too open-ended to some extent.

• Excellent. I suggest a more objective grading, based on what we know, not on what we have learned.

• A clearer line between learning programming language and procedures and learning to create, run, and analyze simulations would be useful; minimally, a little longer time spent on simply learning the language could be useful.

• The structure with the work is a good outline, the scheduling outside work time for the lab with a professor or TA present is difficult.

  An absolutely fascinating subject; I have learned many useful skills from this course, and I believe that these skills will help a lot in my course of pursuing my goal.

  This course is very helpful because not only do we learn the physics theories again, but also we learn how to resolve physics problems by computer simulation.

  The range of physics problem tackled was quite large - however the language should be at least upgraded from True Basic to be more effective for research purposes.

  I think its a good course especially the physical concepts covered.

• The laboratory reports are a valuable/effective way of assessing knowledge of the simulations. I am very happy with the course; programming has taught me to think critically in a different way.

• This course has serious potential which has not been dug into fully. So much can happen in this course. It is useful for any field of study.

• The subjects covered in the course were interesting, however it was too time consuming especially because nothing was specified. Harvey also needs to help the students learn more computer language.

• The course flies past at a furious rate. I have no deep understanding of anything I do which makes me uncomfortable but is, none the less, probably good for me. I learn more than I know that I learn.

Please send comments and corrections to Sujata Davis, sdavis1@clarku.edu.

Updated 6 July 2000.