Responding to student feedback, an ISU faculty member has made changes to one of his classes that he said he hopes will help his students better understand the material.

Chris Chu, assistant professor of computer and electrical engineering, said he decided to make the changes because of student complaints and a lack of material comprehension in his Computer Engineering 210 class.

“I changed the way in which I collected the homework and the way that the teaching assistants conduct the labs,” he said.

Torre Gerritsen, sophomore in pre-computer science, said students have noticed the difference.

“One of the changes that he made was in his homework collection procedure,” Gerritsen said. “He used to collect it every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Now Chu collects the homework every Monday so that we have more time to do the assignments, which I feel is really cool.”

While Gerritsen said he sometimes has trouble understanding Chu’s accent, he still has attended every class even though it begins at 8 a.m. Gerritsen said that Chu has a very strong accent which makes his technical terms very hard to comprehend.

“The greatest help to me as a student are the TAs,” Gerritsen said. “I have a terribly hard time understanding the instructor.”

Chu’s classes are also more helpful now, Gerritsen said.

“Another one of the changes he made was in the labs,” he said. “The TAs now take the first five minutes of the period to overview what we are doing, which helps us understand what we are doing.”

Gerritsen said he appreciates the work Chu has done to improve the quality of his class for students.

“The fact that an Iowa State instructor was willing to change the way that he conducted things may not be a new concept, but the fact that he was willing to change to help his students is a action that more Iowa State professors should follow,” he said.