There are many ways to get systematic student feedback (in addition to the Midterm Class Interview): collecting in-class written feedback, getting feedback online, and using classroom assessment techniques. Instructors use this kind of feedback to help inform their decisions about what to address in subsequent class sessions, to help them see how students are experiencing the course, and to help students judge their own progress learning the course material.
CIDR consultants are available to help you design and implement these different types of assessment, and also to help you interpret student feedback and decide what actions to take in response.
Instructors can gather useful information from their students in a short amount of time through the use of brief written surveys, conducted in class on 3x5 cards or half-sheets of paper. Questions can be open-ended, or can ask students to rate specific features of a class. Questions can address students' perceptions of a class and also what they are learning in it.
Here are examples of brief in-class surveys developed for classes at UW, focusing on a variety of different features of a class, and illustrating the use of both Ratings and Open-Ended Questions:
CIDR can consult with you on developing brief, customized surveys that will address the issues you are interested in learning more about from your students.
Students can offer valuable feedback, but they represent only one perspective on your teaching. CIDR staff are available to consult with you as you review your student feedback and consider how to best interpret and respond to it.
You can also review CIDR's recent Teaching & Learning Bulletin on "Learning from Student Feedback," and see CIDR's Web Guide on Sources of Data for Assessment of Teaching for an overview of other perspectives to consider alongside your students' feedback.
Many of the same types of questions that can be asked through in-class surveys can also be asked online. Online surveys have the advantage of not requiring class time, and because students enter their responses electonically, the responses can be collected in ways that are more easily sortable and searchable. The disadvantage, however, is that response rates to online surveys tend to be much lower than response rates to surveys conducted in class. As a result, it can be difficult to know the extent to which student responses are representative of the class as a whole, or only of individual respondents.
As with in-class surveys, CIDR consultants can help you develop online student surveys, and can also help you analyze and interpret the responses you receive. If you choose to request student feedback online, CIDR can help you design and implement the survey in ways that have been shown to increase both the rate and the quality of student participation online.
Classroom Assessment refers to a broad range of ungraded, in-class activities that instructors use to help them gain specific evidence of their students' learning. Examples include brief in-class surveys (noted above), and a wide variety of class activities designed to identify and document student thinking and learning. You can see examples by viewing CIDR's collection of Classroom Assessment Resources.
CIDR staff are available to consult with UW instructors who would like to design and implement their own Classroom Assessment, and also to help interpret and make use of the information gained through the assessment.
For more information, or to schedule a meeting with a CIDR consultant, call 206-543-6588, or contact us by email to arrange an appointment.
