Collecting Student Feedback
Directly collecting information from students is one of the most effective ways to understand strengths and areas for growth as an instructor. It can be very timely and responsive. To receive authentic feedback, you need to foster a culture of communication that encourages students to provide constructive feedback while at the same time reassuring them that there will be no negative consequences for their responses. To help foster this:
introduce your practice of collecting regular feedback as early as you can in the course. Discuss what constructive feedback looks like, and model this with your students
always include discussion of why you are doing this, and how the information will be used. This helps to build trust.
be willing to respond to the feedback (if students provide feedback, and you don’t respond to this, then they will lose faith in the process and stop responding) by communicating what the feedback was and how you will respond.
The questions you ask are also essential to the usefulness of the feedback you get. Creating good questions is not a trivial matter and takes some time and consideration. A few recommendations to keep in mind when creating questions for any type of feedback are:
use language that the students will understand.
specific questions that target single areas of instructional practice, learning activities or assessments tend to give the most useful, actionable feedback and limit general or unrelated comments.
avoid leading questions.
when requesting open feedback, provide directions that guide the feedback (e.g. instead of "Tell me one thing you liked about the class and one you didn't" use "What was one activity that you found effective for learning and tell my why, and one that you would change and how you would change it to be more effective".)
limit the number of questions. This increases response rate and thoughtfulness of answers.
Student Informal Feedback
One of the easiest methods of obtaining feedback from students is to ask them. Unfortunately in many cases, the simplest solution is often overlooked.
Collecting this feedback can be managed in a number of ways including:
informal questioning towards the end of class time - ask questions that not only check student understanding of the material covered but also about the method of delivery used (did the method fit with the material covered, did students understand the connections within the content) - note that the use of ePoll or response system can provide some anonymity to responses.
daily/weekly exit slips (sometimes called minute papers) - online or paper-based question(s) distributed to students to quickly gain answers to very specific questions about how the students interpreted the material or interacted with the lesson.
These questions can be handled as paper-based activities or as online questionnaires.
Moodle has a nice built in activity to do this called Feedback. It allows for the collection of Anonymous (if desired) student answers to specific questions quickly and easily as well as provides some rudimentary analysis tools (and the ability to export to Excel for further analysis if desired). For assistance using the Feedback Activity please contact the Teaching Centre or check out the help information here: Moodle Feedback Activity Help.
Padlet is also a free online app that can be used to set up a posting board or suggestion box. You can set responses to be anonymous (not show author) and even set it up so responses are sent through a form and only you, or who you allow, can see the suggestions. This can also be used to share resources, allow comments etc.
Mid-Term Evaluations
Instructors have the ability to conduct their own, formalized, 'mid-term' evaluations. These have the following advantages over the formal end-of-course evaluations:
instructors set the questions and can target specific aspects of course design/activities/assessment that they have questions about
instructors can control the timing of the evaluation, working it in when appropriate. This also allows scaffolding in of feedback norms with the class from the beginning of the class, which improves the efficacy of the feedback
the information from these is available in a short time frame, and can be used to make immediate adjustments, rather than making the adjustments for the next iteration of the course
It is recommended that instructors make arrangements to have these evaluations be anonymous. This can be done online using Moodle's Feedback Activity (as described above), or by arranging with a colleague, TA, etc. to come to a class to administer them. (The teaching centre staff can assist with this as well). Remember that while online collection outside of class time is efficient, your response rate will by typically lower than if you collect responses during class.
Staff at the University of Lethbridge use midterm feedback regularly. Here are some example questions they use:
Example 1: (Arundhati Dasgupta, Associate Professor of Physics, Quantum Computing Course)
Do we see a future in Quantum Computers?
How is your learning of Quantum Computers from this course?
If you want to suggest improvements in the teaching, describe them.
If you want to suggest changes in assignments and exams describe them.
Example 2: (Shaylyn Kress, Sessional Lecturer in the Department of Neuroscience/Faculty of Arts and Science)
What is one activity, reading, or part of the lectures that you found helpful to your learning and why?
Going into the second half of the course, what would you like to see more of?
Reflect on your own study strategies for the first exam. What is one thing you hope to continue or improve to prepare for the second half of the course?(student self reflection was very informative in gathering information on the course)
Example 3: (Sheila McManus, Professor, Department of History and Religion/Faculty of Arts and Science, all courses. Idea from Jason Laurendeau, Deptartment of Sociology/ Faculty of Arts and Science)
What should I keep doing?
What should I stop doing?
What should I do differently?
Here is a helpful video on Mid-Term Feedback from McGill University Teaching and Learning. Please note it references some McGill specific software, for which we have equivalents. For Polling we have ePoll , and for surveying we recommend Moodle Feedback Tool (see above).
Mid-course evaluations: An instructor resource video
References and Further Information
https://teaching.utoronto.ca/resources/gathering-formative-feedback-with-mid-course-evaluations/
https://tll.mit.edu/teaching-resources/assess-teaching/mid-semester-formative-feedback/
Related SoTL Research
Exploring Immediate and Sustained Changes in Teaching Practices Following Midterm Student Feedback
Finding Value in the Mid-semester Review of Teaching: Insights from Faculty