We all are familiar with the Course Instructor Feedback forms (CIFs), those end-of-semester evaluations providing a numeric scale of how effective you are as an instructor based on collective student data. Examining each student’s responses can lead to good reflection on what went well and areas perhaps you can improve in.
While this is valuable, I invite you to also consider that reflecting on your teaching should be a regular rather than an occasional process. This can be accomplished by offering students opportunities throughout the semester to anonymously describe how effective your teaching methods are and suggest what changes, if any, should be made. In fact, research suggests that one of the best ways to improve your teaching is to encourage ongoing formative feedback from your students (National Research Council, 2003).
In this post, I provide advice on how you can get feedback from your students on both your teaching and the course content.
Feedback on Teaching
How should you go about asking students to provide feedback on your teaching? From my own experience, I recommend offering opportunities after giving your students their first major assessment, typically about a month into the semester. This allows students time to become familiar with how you teach and consider how their current academic performance ties to your teaching style.
The University of Illinois (my alma mater!) has a four-pronged approach to getting the best responses out of your students. To summarize, ask students:
- What do you like about the course?
- What do you dislike about the course?
- Are there any challenges in your learning that I should consider?
- What changes would you make if you were the instructor?
By asking students these questions, you are signaling openness to trying new things and approaching the learning environment as a two-way street; your students learn from you and you learn from your students.
When writing a survey, think about how you want to phrase your questions to get the most out of your responses. The more specific, the better. For example, a prompt of “Rate the instructor’s effectiveness” is not as useful as “Are group activities during lectures beneficial to your learning?”
Once results are in, look for trends in your students’ responses. If you allow your students to answer anonymously, you can pull quotes from their responses for the class to see on the board. Take some class time to discuss these and then plan how to implement those changes. Perhaps the majority of your students respond to your prompt requesting more time for the group activities themselves. As an instructor, you can see that these students greatly benefit from more opportunities to discuss with their peers. You can then plan to reduce your time lecturing to help maximize their learning.1
Feedback on Course Content
In addition to encouraging students to provide feedback on how you teach, you can consider asking for feedback on the course content itself. What concepts are your students struggling with? You can build in opportunities for students to collectively share this with you.
If you offer review sessions before you give exams, whether in class or in office hours, you could poll students on topics that should be most urgently addressed. In my last blog post, I discussed technology as a tool to promote active learning. Technology can also be used as a tool to gain valuable feedback in this regard. One option available through Notre Dame’s Teaching and Learning Technologies is Poll Everywhere.
On Poll Everywhere, you can select a Q&A type of activity, which can be embedded in your slide deck. Participants will first respond to a question with a typed response. Then, students can upvote and downvote other answers to come to a consensus for the instructor on what concepts should be prioritized. As a TA, I have seen this strategy effectively employed for the Molecules to Ecosystems introductory biology lecture, even for a class of 80 students. Whatever class size you have, technology can provide valuable information to help ensure a most effective review session for your students.
By providing opportunities throughout the semester, gathering feedback offers a win-win for both the instructor and student. The earlier you and your students have a common understanding, the better your semester will be overall. It will pay off in the long run; students will see that you care about their learning and want the best for them. An additional plus? You will likely benefit from higher CIF scores (Huston 2009), and these evaluations can bolster your teaching portfolio.
Matthew Fink is a graduate associate at Notre Dame Learning’s Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence and is pursuing a Ph.D. in biological sciences at the University.
1 If you’re a Notre Dame instructor and need help gathering student feedback, the Kaneb Center can assist you.