For both instructors and students, there are a lot of good reasons to administer a mid-semester feedback survey. It gives you as the instructor an opportunity to show that you value students’ feedback and want to improve your teaching and their learning. It also enhances students’ metacognitive skills, which can benefit their learning throughout their college careers. And from your students’ perspective, giving an instructor feedback at mid-semester could actually improve their learning experience. Their reflections about what is (and isn’t) working in the course could lead to changes that could benefit their learning in the current semester.
But there’s another reason to elicit feedback from your students at mid-semester. If your mid-semester evaluation process follows evidence-based best practices, it might lead to higher end-of-semester evaluations. This is the main finding of research by McGowan and Osguthorpe (2011), who conducted a study on the impact of administering mid-semester evaluations (MSEs) on instructors’ end-of-semester evaluations. One group of faculty in the study administered MSEs and followed up on them by reading and analyzing the responses, discussing them with their students, and making some changes to their teaching. Another group of faculty administered MSEs but did little or no follow-up. When the researchers compared the end-of-semester evaluations of these two groups, they found that the faculty who followed up on the MSEs with their students and adjusted their teaching practices had higher end-of semester evaluations, compared to those of faculty who did little or no follow-up.
So one way to make your MSEs work for you is to engage with your mid-semester feedback to improve your teaching – which could lead to higher OCQs. Below we describe how to accomplish that.
(First, you’ll need to decide what to ask students in your MSE and to plan how to administer it. For help in deciding what questions to ask, see the blog posts on questions to ask to obtain targeted feedback, and questions to ask to analyze the climate of belongingness and inclusion in your course. For information on the process of administering a MSE, refer to the blog post on how to plan and administer mid-semester feedback surveys.)
- After you’ve collected MSEs, the first task is to analyze the responses. Tabulate the responses to any multiple-choice or Likert-type questions to reveal basic trends. Read the responses to open-ended questions and identify common threads running through them. To do this, sort the responses into general topics (e.g., responses about grading, about in-class activities, about the textbook and readings, etc.). If you print out the responses, you can use highlighters to color-code them by topic. Then read the responses on a specific topic to determine students’ primary message(s) on that topic. Alternatively, if the responses are in digital form, you can enter them into a generative AI platform such as ChatGPT or Copilot, and ask it to identify common threads.
- Synthesize the results from the multiple-choice and open-ended responses to identify overall themes. For example, if students tend to disagree with the statement, “Out-of-class activities help me learn,” and a thread in the open-ended responses indicates students feel there is a lot of busy work in the course, you might connect these and conclude that students don’t understand the purpose of assigned out-of-class activities. Don’t forget to identify themes about aspects of the course that students like as well as those they’re more negative about; it’s important for you to know what students think is working as well as what’s not working.
- Decide how to respond to each theme. Is it something you’re willing to change, or something you’d like to discuss with your students, or something you’re unwilling to change? Is it something you can address this semester, or will it need to wait for the future? For example, referring to the example above about out-of-class busy work, you might decide to adjust the amount of out-of-class work you assign in the current semester; or discuss the purpose of that work with your students and clarify how it will help them succeed in the course; or wait to make changes in a future semester. Remember that you don’t always have to say “yes” if students suggest a change that goes against your teaching philosophy or that simply seems like a bad idea.
- If you decide to make changes this semester, you’ll want to review your syllabus to determine whether you’ll need to adjust your class schedule, assignments, or due dates, and if so, what those adjustments should be.
- The final step is to communicate with your students about their feedback and your responses to it. This step is crucial! If it isn’t done, not only will you likely not see an increase in your end-of-semester evaluations; you may even see a decrease. Discuss with students the key themes you identified in their responses, and ask for clarification if needed. If you’ve decided to make changes in the course in response to the feedback, describe the proposed changes and check with students that they understand and are comfortable with them. To ensure all your students are aware of the changes, you might also want to post them in your Canvas site or send out an announcement.
If you’re unsure how to respond to your students’ midsemester feedback or want to discuss your ideas with a consultant, contact the CITL to set up a consultation.
Reference
McGowan, W., & Osguthorpe, R. (2011). Student and faculty perceptions of effects of midcourse evaluation. In Miller, J. & Groccia, J. (Eds), To Improve the Academy: Resources for Faculty, Instructional, and Organizational Development, 29 (1), 160-172. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2334-4822.2011.tb00629.x
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