Checking in with your students at the midpoint of the course provides you feedback when you can use it to make a course correction. You also provide your students practice in providing constructive feedback on their learning – a skill that can be invaluable when it comes to completing course evaluations at the end of the semester. There are many forms for gathering feedback from your students. Below are some you might want to try.
- An easy place to start is to simply give the end-of-semester course evaluation at midterm. This will give you a sense of how your students are responding to the course and will give them some practice providing constructive feedback. Click here to review the questions administered to Stetson University undergraduate students.
- The Student Assessment of their Learning Gains Survey is an customizable online instrument that frames questions about your course in terms of the student learning gains. Can be administered during and/or at the end of the semester.
- You can design a survey customized to your course. Surveys can be administered on paper or through your course management system. Use the sample questions from the Berkeley Center for Teaching and Learning or this sample survey from the McGraw Center at Princeton University as a starting point.
Survey advice: Surveys ask students to respond to components of the course, the instructors style and/or the students learning. Framing the questions around learning will make the responses most useful in evaluating the effectiveness of your course. Questions about satisfaction often lead you to responses that aren’t in your control.
- The Brown Center offers a limited number of small-group instructional diagnosis (SGID) evaluations. This technique uses to a trained facilitator to elicit feedback from students during in small groups. To request this service, contact the center staff.
You may wish to employ less formal mechanisms for gathering feedback such as Minute Papers, The Muddiest Point or Chain Notes and other techniques. The best resources for examples of classroom evaluation techniques is the comprehensive text ‘Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers’ by Angelo and Cross. If you’d like to borrow a copy, please send us a request.