Feedback
- Please leave feedback by pressing the "edit" link next to your semester
- Start your comment with a * (this will make it into a bullet)
- Feel free to sign your UVa computing ID (ie. mst3k) or leave a comment anonymously
- Comments can be good or bad!!
- You were so patient and never got frustrated when someone had a hard time comprehending a topic. You would simply try to explain it in a new fashion. No question was ever a stupid one. -Jess
- Hi Lesley, I hope you're doing well. I see no reason to give you anonymous feedback, and I'm completely comfortable with you sharing my feedback if you want. You are, hands down, the best TA I've had at UVa. This is especially impressive given that I've had nearly four years of classes with TAs and that this class, shall we say, was maybe not my biggest priority? I took this class on something of a whim; it was the only class not applicable to my major or minor. In retrospect, this was not the best decision since I didn't have the time to devote to it. I could have easily ended up hating this class--especially lab on Thursday nights. However, because of your enthusiasm, good humor, and teaching skills, I actually found myself enjoying lab. I hope this was evident by the way Mia and I liked to talk to you throughout lab. Hopefully we weren't too distracting! Looking forward, I would say continue teaching exactly as you are now. I can think of very little you could do to improve. The only thing that comes to mind is a schedule change for office hours. However, I think the problem here is a function of your students procrastinating rather than you actually needing to change your hours from Sundays. However, I know that I would have liked going to you more than the other TAs for assistance. In terms of helping me understand the material and just being pleasant in general, you were head and shoulders above the other TAs. I hope you enjoyed the semester! I hope you have a wonderful winter break and continue to dominate on Sporcle :) Best wishes, Hayley
- Hi Lesley, Feel free to use this for your portfolio! Something that you hope I continue to do well in the future: You always answered my questions in lab in a way that made me understand the concepts of the material, not just that specific coding problem.
By having us try different things with our code, you showed us our mistakes and why they happened (didn't just say "no that's wrong"). Positive reinforcement via candy is always good :) Something you hope I will never again do in the future: Make us stay all the way through lab even if we'd finished (I don't think this was your fault though... pretty sure Prof Sherriff put that rule in place). Something which I did competently but could do better in the future: Maybe some more example coding at the beginning of the first few labs? Have a wonderful break! Susanna
- ******THE AWESOME
- I like how you are straight forward with your teaching and you make sure that people understand. It really seems like you care.
- Also, you are funny and have an upbeat sense of teaching, despite your long hours.
- Additionally, I really like the fact that you cut the crap - you are not afraid to say the book sucks, or that a policy is wrong. It is this type of independent thought that helps students out a lot.
- Your use of javabat is great
- You are fast in your responses via email and the discussion board
- ********************************
- *******THE NEEDS MORE AWESOME
- For future students, you could work on your ability to be slightly more methodical with the way that you teach. You explain well, but not always in the most organized fashion.
- Most of the time, CS students do not have a hard time understanding the 'picture' or the general idea of a program. For example, it is easy to understand how a binary search tree works on a basic visual level. The real difficulty is in the coding, so please spend most of your time explaining how the coding works and then how it relates to the picture, and not the other way around.
- In general, there are kids that ask a lot of questions, because they forget that they are not the only people in the world. So, as you walk around, try and spend your time equally between students so that everyone gets ample help. Most of the time when I was raising my hand, a short explanation would do, and this was similar for many people. You can accomplish a lot by giving a lot of short explanations and coming back to someone with a lot of trouble. (I know you probably tried to do this but I am emphasizing it)
- *************************************************
- ****THE LESS AWESOME
- Field trips are a net loss of goodness
- Lesley says to herself: test out code from new slides before publishing ppt
- I think Lesley is a great TA who devoted a lot of time and effort during/outside of labs to help out students. Although I only asked her questions a couple of times in lab, I felt whenever I had a question she could offer a very clear explanation by either drawing a flow chart or refreshing the basic concepts in my mind. In all, I really enjoyed all of her labs and review sessions!
- Something that I hope you would continue doing: BE AS SMART AS YOU ARE!!
you helped me a lot from the beginning (when you finally got my dr java working) to the end (movies class anyone??) to everything in between (aka lolcats) and you were the best!
- lesley was great at getting the point across and making sure that we understand the important concepts. she was great in office hours because she alloted a certain amount of time to each group answering questions to help you better develop your own code rather than spending an hour writing the code for you like some of the other ta's did. the powerpoints were an amazing resource for test review. can't think of anything she could have done better. i would not have passed this class if it weren't for her!
- You were excellent at making yourself available and helpful. You could be much more helpful if you provide answers to the difficult and confusing questions that you create.
- Lesly is a great TA who gave clear explanations when ever I asked questions in the help forum and in the lab. Review sessions of her really helped me a lot. She might probably test out the codes before publishing the ppt. -jk6fz
- Hi Lesley, I hope you're having a great break! I wanted to provide feedback for CS 1110. I thought you were a fabulous TA for the class. You knew exactly how to help and were available whenever we needed help. I wouldn't change anything. You always brought your great personality to class which definitely made my days better! Thanks for all of your help in class. I definitely would not have gotten a good grade without you! Happy Holidays! Puja
- Hi Lesley, I hope you are enjoying your holidays as well. Something that you hope I continue to do well in the future: The powerpoints and the exam reviews went very far in helping to clarify things for me and for me to successfully complete the course. They were really appreciated. Something you hope I will never again do in the future: I think I was lucky to have you and Krasi for my lab TAs. No comments here....Something which I did competently but could do better in the future: I know it's not your fault, but maybe we could have a little more preparation for the homeworks; maybe in the form of the way you were able to prepare us for the tests. Getting to a TA outside of the class is ridiculously difficult, and access was further restricted by a rule that we could only ask one question at a time. Many people were complaining that they'd have to go several times and wait a long time just for a single chance to ask a question. Maybe we could have a powerpoint well before the first test to just make sure we don't get lost because the course starts to pick up suddenly, then we get hit with the test and lab quiz. During labs, if a lot of people have the same question because it's something new, you could answer it at once on the projection, so that way you can spend more time individually with the students that could benefit from your help the most. -Christopher
- Lesley, I think you were an awesome TA and were very helpful. The only thing is that during office hours you (or any other TA really) gave that much time to each pair. That's basically all I wanted to say. -Shefali
- Lesley was the best TA ever! She was the TA in my lab and actually helped us learn. I personally am terrible at CS and she was extremely helpful in explaining the little things that most people neglected to even mention. For someone with no background experience it was very useful to hear her explanations. Lesley's the best!
- I really don't get CS so I probably never will...but Lesley does take her time to try to make this stuff somewhat understandable...as evidenced in office hours...if she is alone with you...she does an excellent one-on-one tutor!!!!!!
- Lesley was an excellent TA. She actually took the time to hold a review session before the final which most absolutely helped on the final. YOU GO LESLEY!!!!
- Lesley is the BEST TA ever! She is clearly the best TA CS 101 has. She knows so much about computer science, however, she does a really good job of explaining it to people who have never taken computer science before. She is so nice and was extremely helpful during office hours! :)
- I can tell that Lesley really wants us to do well in the class. She is extremely helpful and gives great help/advice during office hours. She is the only TA that I am willing to wait over an hour for during office hours. She is great at explaining difficult topics and providing alternate explanations. Her review session for the final exam was also very helpful.
- Specifically, the help forum for the Recycling homework served as a great resource for me, as it provided guidance as well as broke the program down into manageable steps. Lesley, thanks for all your help during office hours, you really had a good balance of allowing students to figuring things out for themselves as well as leading them in the right direction.
- The final review was pretty helpful, made me think
- Lesley, above all, wanted us to learn and be excited about CS. She'd stop and tell us to think about the problem, but would give us the help we needed to figure out why something was wrong/right on our own. She really did a great job as a TA and I hope all of my other TAs are as good as her.
- I seem to be the only person ever who didn't like Lesley at all. When I sent a concerned email about their decision to not have a make up lab quiz, she totally misconstrued my concern for anger and replied in a way that was both extraordinarily defensive and condescending. And it is infuriating that, when you download "Review Session PPT" by Lesley to aid your review, you are greeted by a cutesy note saying "I won’t provide the answers in the powerpoint, because that would benefit people who don’t even show up". The idiocy of this blows my mind. Screw you, Lesley.
- I agree with the person above about the review ppt. Maybe some of us couldn't come to that review session... I never had to personally interact with Lesley (although some of her help forum guidelines were quite useful). I do have to say that I saw quite a few help forum responses/discussions along with an email or two where Lesley was just being a complete jerk. In response to one email she set out, I would like to say that just because she has a ton of work to do, doesn't mean that our problems, as students, are not important. This is her job, so I don't think she really gets to be mean to us just because it is keeping her busy. I'm sure Lesley was an effective TA, seeing as there are many positive responses, but I was not a fan of the way she handled some problems (even though I was not directly involved).
- If you had to take everything positive and everything negative that occurred the positives won by far. In personal one on one interactions Lesley was one of the best TAs. Lesley tried hard to help in anyway possible, sometimes even with a little humor and/or reassurance when you were stressing out. While I will admit that I was annoyed by the way the first part of the review session was done, I enjoyed the latter half much more (especially the fact that she didn't have to do the review session for us). Judging Lesley as a TA overall (especially when compared to others that I have dealt with or had in other classes) she was by far one of the best I have had.
- Lesley is a pro. She had a great attitude and had a lot of fun with the class making it much more enjoyable for everyone. I loved her edits to the boring programs we had to write. She was an excellent TA.
- She is really enthusiastic about teaching and helping students. During the lab sessions I was with her, she has never shown any negative attitude towards students. She definitely made my experience a lot less frustrating.
- She always approached you with a friendly and kind attitude, was always really helpful and was always happy about the things she did. She was probably one of the reasons i was able to survive the labs and understand CS.
- In all honesty, you were the only TA that I felt gave a damn about us, so that's cool. Your interest in the subject was a godsend. I tore the CS101 class apart in the other 3 surveys but in 2 of them i mentioned that Lesley was helpful and cheery and etc etc. Have a nice summer! Thanks for everything!
- Lesley, I know we only worked together a few time's but I could rave about you're knowledge and enthusiasm in helping during CS101 Lab's and homework and review sessions. You were the best TA ever, and I know I'm not the only who feels this way and just wanted to thank you, because I went into the Final exam with confidence! Have a great summer.
- Lesley was the best TA ever! She was extremely helpful, and she was extremely dedicated to helping students. Her extensive knowledge was obviously very beneficial, but the fact that she wanted to help students was one of the main reasons that she was such a great TA. I know that she worked extremely hard to answer everyone's posts online regarding homeworks. She also held the most office hours of any TA, and really wanted everyone to get through the assignments and understand everything.
- Lesley was the best TA in our entire section. She definitely has a way of changing the way she explain things in order to help each specific student. She understands that we all learn in different ways and she is very patient when we do not understand something. She makes me feel very comfortable asking questions about anything - I never feel like I am asking a dumb question. She is also always eager to help and puts in countless hours of extra time towards helping her students.
- Lesley was the best TA by far. I would write my name on the sign-up sheet until she came around to my computer. All the other TA's would just give you general knowledge, that was usually unhelpful, but never helped with implementation. Lesley made me feel like I could actually get my work done and understand it. She was super nice and always wanted to help. Her eagerness to fix whatever problems arose made CS a much more enjoyable experience. akr2e
- The most impressive thing about Lesley is the fact that despite her overwhelming knowledge of the subject matter, she is able to bring it down to a level that is easy for even the most confused student to understand. She can leave the technical terms at the door in order to explain the gist of the problem, and then she integrates those terms and a more structured, involved view of a problem once the student understands the basic nuts and bolts. She is extremely patient, kind, and a joy to work with. All of this, on top of being an undergraduate student, set her above and beyond any T.A. I've had in any class throughout my undergraduate career. I cannot thank her enough for her hard work and going above and beyond the call of duty time after time. The LAST thing I wanted to ever do was take a computer science course - Lesley helped make it understandable and fun! ~ech6a
- Lesley is an amazing CS 101 T.A. She is always willing to help, and more importantly, is very patient while explaining the problems. She also describes the problems in different ways depending on which way the student learns which is crucial to fully understanding the topics. Lesley is always ready to go with a very positive, can-do attitude, which is contagious to everyone around. She's the best!! :)
- Lesley is always extremely helpful. She helps me with my programs and with the concepts I don't understand from class. In programming, she is always very patient when I don't know how to explain what I'm frustrated with. In the concepts, she explains things in a clear way and gives valid, understandable examples. She is always helpful and positive. She has stayed past her office hours helping me understand something. I often see her in passing outside of office hours or class and she is always happy and says "Hello" to me. This shows me that she truly cares about her students.~kmb2gj
- Lesley is the best TA I've ever had. Not only is she willing to sacrifice her own time to help her students, she makes her explanations helpful and understandable. I know I get frustrated with more complex coding concepts, but her explanations always clear up my confusion and set me back on the right path to finding the answer. I don't know if I would have one as well this semester in CS101 without her.
- Whenever I get stuck on an activity in lab or a homework assignment during office hours, Lesley is always willing to help. It's clear she knows the material well, but she's still able to simplify the concepts down to a level that even the most confused student can understand. She's patient and even willing to stay past the end of her office hours to make sure students know what they're doing. I wouldn't have made it through CS 101 without her. (I'll leave my computing ID just in case -- jaa5r)
- I thought Lesley was a great TA because she was really good at identifying the concepts were didn't understand (that either weren't taught in class or weren't taught well) and explaining them. She was also really enthusiastic and really nice, as well as being even willing to give up her personal time to help people. Lesley's the best!
- Lesley is a delight to interact with, breaking all the conventional stereotypes of computer scientists being anti-social. She is prompt, intelligent, and helpful at times when she doesn't need to be. There were late of hours of the night when she'd stay pass her allotted TA hours simply to help those in need. The only complaint I have, and it's a minor one, is that at times she'll spoon-feed you the answers. A little more subtlety might help students understand the concepts better.
- Yesterday was one of the first times I'd had you as a TA and you were extremely helpful! I was just really stuck at the moment and your explanation really cleared things up for me. Thank you. Overall, I would assume that you are a wonderful TA and I noticed that you got there earlier than you were supposed to which was great!
- Lesley was an awesome TA for CS101. I'd never taken any programming before and she was really great at explaining the concepts of what you had to do rather than just assuming you knew what she was talking about. In homework office hours, she looked every part of your program no matter what question you had which was great because it checked for other errors. Honestly, she was the best TA I've ever had because it was obvious that she wanted you to get the right answer by figuring it out on your own. Thanks Lesley!!! (jah5hz)
- Lesley is clearly the best TA! However, I agree with what everybody has said above. She is far more than amazing. When ever it came a time where I felt that I could not succeed, Lesley was there to the rescue! In addition to her overwhelming courtesy and liveliness, I can say that she has helped encourage and inspire me to be just as knowledgeable as her one day in Computer Science. Lesley truly brings a positive contribution to this course. Thanks Lesley! (xjl4a)
- This page was created at the end of Fall 2008, but Spring 08 students are welcome to leave retroactive feedback here.
On my honor, as a U.Va. student, I have not modified any of the feedback. --Lesley