Creating an OCQ Game Plan

If you were wowed during IU’s latest football season, you probably know the power of creating a game plan. Game plans help us focus our energies on improvement, and they’re as helpful in the classroom as on the field. Creating a game plan for crafting and analyzing your end-of-semester online course questionnaires (OCQs) can help you feel more confident and prepare you to identify and utilize constructive student feedback. Trust me, if game plans can help a football team move from a 1-8 record to an 8-1 season, they can definitely help you improve your teaching.  

While OCQs are not a foolproof way to assess your teaching, educational research demonstrates they can a tool for formative assessment and help instructors cultivate an “improvement mindset.” The OCQ Game Plan is exactly what it sounds like: a plan to meaningfully address student feedback by allowing yourself the space to recognize your own skills as an educator and utilizing those skills to improve your future courses. Here are some steps to get you started:  

1. Take time to reflect. Reflecting on your own experience can help you understand your course before being influenced by our students’ responses. What moments stand out to you? Do you believe your learning objectives were achieved? What places might need adaptation or adjustment? Additionally, a thoughtful reflection will help prepare you for the commentary you might receive. 
2. Designate a time and place to engage with your OCQs. Committing to your OCQs means giving them appropriate time and space as you would with any of your other work duties. Set up time to go to your office or your kitchen table; bring your favorite snacks and play some music. 
3. Strategize how you read responses. Decide how you want to receive the information–in what order and by whom. There’s no need to default to the system’s automated order; maybe you’d prefer to read what students enjoyed about the course before reviewing quantitative graphs. Some instructors ask a trusted colleague (or, ahem, their favorite CITL Consultant) to read through the responses with them, summarizing key points and recurrent themes. MS Copilot can also assist with a first reading.  
4. Take notes. Approach your OCQs as a document you are using to improve your teaching. Take notes focused on what skills you showcased, things you could change, and how your reflection aligns (or doesn’t) with student feedback. As Manya Whitaker from Colorado College writes, this may take some qualitative data analysis and “decoding” of student comments.  
5. Make a list of actionable goals. After you’ve read and taken notes on your responses, draft goals for next term. Setting realistic, achievable goals will help you focus on improving your course instead of dwelling on unhelpful feedback. Emily Dosmar, of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, also suggests returning to your goals and reflections when you think about your OCQs rather than the OCQs themselves to promote positive self-talk and stay centered on actionable changes.  

Online Course Questionnaires are a great resource for us to reflect on the ways we teach, but they can also be frustrating and uncomfortable if we do not approach them like the valuable (and heavily biased) tools they are. Want more practice on these steps? Attend our upcoming workshop, Using OCQs to Create Actionable Teaching Goals, on Friday, April 25.  

References and further reading: 

“Administering and Interpreting Course Evaluations.” Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning, Indiana University Bloomington.  

Dosmar, Emily. “Course Evaluations as a Tool for Growth.” The Teaching Professor. 2021. 

Hodges, L. C., and Stanton, K. “Translating comments on student evaluations into the language of learning.” Innovative Higher Education, 31, 279-286. 2007. (Also available via IUCAT.)  

Weimer, Maryellen. “What Can We Learn from End-of-Course Evaluations?” The Teaching Professor. 2017. 

Whitaker, Manya. “How to Make the Best of Bad Course Evaluations.’” Chronicle of Higher Education. 2019.