It’s almost midterm, a time to gauge just how well our students are learning the material we are teaching them. But what about our performance? Who is evaluating how we are doing, if we’re being effective, or if students are learning? Mid-term teaching evaluations can be a wonderful tool to gauge how students are perceiving the course, the material, and our teaching.
By conducting mid-term teaching evaluations, you have the students’ perspective once they’ve experienced enough of the course to provide constructive feedback, but while there is still enough time in the course to make some substantive changes (if needed). Learning about a potential problem can have long-term results for you and for your students. For students, a mid-term evaluation can provide an outlet for simmering frustrations that you could possibly change. On the other hand, you have the opportunity to find out what is working well in a course (so you can build on that positive feedback).
According to Stanford University’s Center for Teaching and Learning (Tomorrow’s Professor mailing list by Rick Reis), many faculty who use mid-term teaching evaluations also receive higher end-of-term evaluations.
Mid-term evaluations don’t have to be complicated or time consuming. They can also provide more information than some end-of-term Likert-scale evaluations that provide percentages but no commentary. To avoid these issues, many educators find the SGID (Small Group Instructional Diagnosis) useful. SGID is a structured mid-term interview of a class, and this interview provides specific feedback on what the students like about a course, what they feel needs improvement, and their ideas on how to carry out the improvement. SGID can also ask students about their own responsibility for learning in a course. A professional from a center for teaching and learning on your campus can administer the SGID, or you might have a colleague interview your students. The National Teaching and Learning Forum provides a lot of very helpful information about SGID.
If you wanted an often easier method of gaining mid-term feedback on your courses, you can use the survey function built in within many course management systems. You could even create your own evaluation (using such questions as those provided by the McGraw Center at Yale ) on an on-line survey program (Survey Monkey, for example).
What are your thoughts or experiences on mid-term teaching evaluations? Any cautionary tales or helpful hints? Please leave them in comments below.
(Image by flickr user that blonde girl. Licensed through Creative Commons.)
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12 Responses to Mid-Term Teaching Evaluations
Rohan Maitzen - September 25, 2009 at 11:06 am
I have often used a “quick check” evaluation at mid-term to see how we’re doing in terms of pace, reading load, (perceived) speed and fairness in evaluating and returning assignments, etc. One of my favourite things to do with the results is to tabulate them and show them to the students. The 50% who think you are going way too fast are surprised to see that 50% think you are going just right or too slow, for instance; the ones who hate a particular reading discover that many others considered it the best so far; and so on. I think it just helps everyone’s attitude improve when they realize their individual experience is not necessarily generalizable. Of course, I think these evaluations are also an important exercise for the instructor(s) as you can sometimes adjust your teaching strategies if there’s a consensus among the class that something isn’t working–or that they’d like more of something I’d tried once or twice.
Mark Vega - September 25, 2009 at 11:14 am
Just wanted to second the recommendation of mid-term teaching evals. I’ve conducted them while working for Stanford’s CTL as a teaching consultant and also had them conducted for classes I’ve TAed and taught. For the ones I’ve conducted, students were never anything less than forthcoming, detailed, and even-handed about “what worked” and what the instructor should consider as “targets for improvement.” While online surveys are useful, the interview format helped students, in my experience, feel invested in the remaining weeks of the class and their capacity to affect its content, structure, and presentation.
Jennifer Imazeki - September 25, 2009 at 11:26 am
I agree wholeheartedly with Rohan that sharing the results of mid-term evaluations can be eye-opening for students. I also think that there is no point to doing such an evaluation if you aren’t prepared to follow up on it, or at least explain to students why you aren’t (e.g., if 80% of the class thinks the pace is ‘too fast’, are you willing to slow it down? or to talk to the students about why they are struggling/what you can do to help them?). I routinely have students comment that I ‘talk too fast’ so I always have to explain to them that if this is simply how I talk (and every time I try to talk slower, I feel like I sound like a cartoon character) but I will try to pause more often, if they in turn agree not to start talking every time I pause (I teach a class of 500 so this is not a minor request), and I encourage them to bring recorders to class. I’m always a little surprised ( and sad) at how surprised my students are that a teacher is asking them for feedback…
Nels P. Highberg - September 25, 2009 at 11:59 am
Horace wrote a great post yesterday about this, and I hope he doesn’t mind if I post the link:
http://delightandinstruct.blogspot.com/2009/09/instant-feedback.html
I usually do what he does, though I’m thinking of switching to an anonymous survey. I rarely change anything based on what comes of the evaluations because the things mentioned are things I just won’t change, but it does give me a chance to clarify my reasoning, which has always seemed to go over well, so far.
Tria - September 25, 2009 at 12:08 pm
I like to use a simple “Stop, Start, Continue” evaluation. Each student lists one thing she’d like me to stop doing, one thing she’d like me to start doing, and one thing I’m already doing that she’d like to see continued. Of course, I remind students that I can not stop assigning papers or start bringing pizza to class, so they should keep their requests reasonable. Usually, I get some great suggestions and insight from this approach, and the students like to know that their concerns are being heard.
I agree that making the feedback results available to the class can be very helpful. Also, this gives me a chance to discuss why I can or can’t modify the class based on the results, or to think of areas where we might be able to compromise.
Dave Eubanks - September 25, 2009 at 12:59 pm
While turning your course into an assessment of itself would be overdoing it, it’s not a bad idea to do administer evaluations more than twice (midterm and end-term). The argument for these evaluations is that courses need formative assessment, too, and so it makes sense to collect feedback regularly and with varying instruments (Horace’s rubric is great, and SGID and its variants will generate data you’ll never get from a questionnaire) and to acknowledge and use the feedback.
Making other-than-institutional evaluations a regular part of pedagogical practice will hopeful help to counter the perception of the teacher as an instrument for information distribution and learning as a purely consumerist enterprise.
Jason B. Jones - September 25, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Having just come from a workshop about the P&T process, I’d also point out that if you think the formal institutional teaching evaluations don’t capture what’s going on your classroom, it’s handy to have as many different ways of showing it as possible. And being able to show examples of “I was doing this; after consulting with my students we tried X; X worked really well in achieving course learning outcome 2″–that’s really powerful.
George H. Williams - September 25, 2009 at 2:04 pm
The “Stop, Start, Continue” method sounds great. I think I’ll adopt and adapt it for some mid-semester evaluations next week.
What I’ve usually done is ask students to answer these questions:
1. What’s going well?
2. What could be improved?
3. What steps should the instructor take to improve things?
4. What steps should the students take to improve things?
But I think this might be better:
1. What should the instructor stop doing?
2. What should the instructor start doing?
3. What should the instructor keep doing?
4. What should the students stop doing?
5. What should the students start doing?
6. What should the students keep doing?
I’ve found that it’s useful to have the students also evaluate themselves at the mid-point of the semester, and to point out that the success or failure of the course depends–in part–on them.
Michael D Dwyer - September 25, 2009 at 2:18 pm
At the end of every instructional unit, I just have students write me a short letter that lets me know what sorts of things are helpful, if there are concepts in the course they don’t quite understand, or what suggestions they’d have for the class. In turn, I write them a letter about how I think the course is progressing and what sorts of expectations I have. I think one of the biggest benefits of doing these evaluations is communicating to students that you’re invested in making the course work for them. So I always make a point of following up on trends (or contradictions) I noticed in their responses, and tell them how I’m going to adapt moving forward. The goodwill you get from that is as valuable as the information you get in the evals.
Candace Nast - September 25, 2009 at 2:19 pm
I’ve used a variation of this called “Two pluses and a wish.”
After distributing small, coloured pieces of paper (so students are encouraged to be concise and also because new shapes & colours encourage creativity) students are asked to write down two positive things and one wish related to the actual course.
It’s quick to complete in the classroom and gathering the feedback is quick too so it still works in a large class. It’s helpful to know what students appreciate as well as where the struggles are…less crippling for new profs because the feedback won’t all be negative.
Natalie Houston - September 25, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Great topic, Billie. I’ve used a set of 10 statements that cover different aspects of the learning situation (“The instructor clearly explains the course material”; “I am keeping up with the reading for this class”; etc) with a 5-point rubric (Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree). Plus a space for further comments at the end. It’s quick, and having the 10 statements on the sheet helps elicit more useful feedback in the open-ended comment space.
William Patrick Wend - September 29, 2009 at 4:29 pm
I just made a few changes to the class schedule in my 101 sections based on student feedback the other day. During a group assignment, a number of students wished aloud that we could cover ____ and ____ more and move away from what we had been doing the last week or so. Fair enough: I made a few additions and subtractions and will share with them tomorrow in class.
Just by casually asking students who stay after to talk to me, or those I run into on campus, how class is going that day/week/overall/etc I have learned so much that will drastically change how I teach both right now and next semester.