Student Evaluations of Teaching

I just got the results of my Student's evaluation of my teaching for my Fall 2010 Oceanography course. The students are given a survey near the end of the semester that asks the students to respond to 12 statements, to which they can fill in bubbles on the form indicating how strongly the agree or disagree with the statement. There are 5 degrees of agreement : strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, and strongly disagree. They can also bubble in 'no response', which isn't scored. Additionally, they can write in a short response. On the back of the form they can write a longer comment for my teaching overall.

My average overall score was 4.3 out of 5. My lowest score one a particular statement was 3.8 out of 5; I received that in response to 'the instructor holds my interest in class' and 'the instructor keeps my informed about my academic progress'. I also received an average score of 3.9 for 'the instructor encourages students to ask questions and participate in class'. It was a bit surprising to see a lower score for that last question, because I, well I thought at least, that I was frequently asking them if they had any questions. Rarely does anyone bother to ask. I'll have to assume that they want to ask questions but just need more invitations.

One statement they have to rate is 'the instructor has increased my knowledge of the subject matter'. Now, my problem here is that, if they don't answer 'strongly agree' here, then doesn't that mean that they should've failed the course? Its not asking to indicate how much you've learned even, so that you can agree, but not strongly agree, and unless a person is saying that they already knew everything that we covered, they must be saying that they didn't learn anything we covered, which is a little hard to believe. I know that most people aren't going to look at the question that way, but still.

Amoung the comments they've made are things like 'He talks for long periods of time by himself', 'hard to stay awake', 'don't shut the lights during powerpoint', 'goes back and forth between slides too much', 'doesn't stop & interact'. Now, the problem is that this is a class that meets 3 times a week for two hours a session, so, yeah, there are going to be times when I have to talk for a while. I'll absolutely admit that I can make the course more interactive, and I'm trying out some new things in the new semester, so its, of course, a valid criticism, they're all valid criticisms. But at the same time, surely they realize that there will be periods in a lecture when the instructor is, well, lecturing. Not pontificating or droning, but lecturing. We can't break out a coloring book every 40 minutes.