It doesn’t matter whether you’re a politician, a professor, or a student — midterms are everyone’s favorite thing, right?
Okay, not really. But there’s no particular reason to let them become occasions for stress and dread, either (and there are probably some ways to help keep stress at a minimum, in any case). Why not instead, view midterm evaluations as occasions for growth and improvement?
Such evaluations can provide an opportunity to step back, take a deep breath, and reflect on how things are going. Billie’s written before about the benefits of doing mid-semester teaching evaluations. Like her, I’d like to know what’s working well and what isn’t in time to make changes that might help currently enrolled students.
So, in class today, I’ll be asking my students for input on what’s working well, what isn’t, and what they think we should try. Though of course I can’t guarantee that I’ll incorporate all their suggestions, I’m genuinely interested in what they have to say, and will give it real consideration.
I’ll also be asking my students to evaluate their own class participation thus far (and yes, I stole borrowed this idea from Ryan, who in turn borrowed it from someone else). I won’t be asking for an actual essay from them, but I will ask what participation grade they’d give themselves at this point in the semester, and why.
But it seems to me that the midpoint of the semester is a good time for self-evaluation as well. Accordingly, I’ll be taking some time during fall break to consider how I’m doing with my own goals in teaching and writing, and what steps I might take to improve in those areas.
What about you? Are you conducting midterm evaluations of your students and/or yourself this semester? Let us know in the comments.
[Image by Flickr user LaMenta3 / Creative Commons licensed]
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12 Responses to Midterm Evaluations
deannamascle - October 15, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Sort of. I was actually just thinking this morning that it would be good to reflect on what worked well and what needs to be tweaked for the first half of the semester as there is no guarantee I’ll remember come December (end of semester) or January (beginning of new semester) when it is time to plan/prepare for the new semester. My class (two sections of the same class) this semester is roughly divided into two parts — the first half focused more on reading although there was certainly a fair amount of writing to support that reading so I made my midterm (assignment rather than test) a reflection about that reading. I asked some specific questions that needed to be addressed that covered the key student learner outcomes I hoped to cover with the assignment but also what the student took away from the assignment activities as well as the reading. As I read those reflections it is very helpful to me to gauge not only the effectiveness of the assignment but also the level of student engagement. I’m pretty pleased (not done reading them all yet) so far that they all seem to have gotten something out of it and some more than I expected.
heatherwhitney - October 15, 2010 at 2:30 pm
I’ve started doing evaluations at four and eight weeks, a bit before and after midterm. This time around, the four week evaluation helped me catch some student sentiment that was brewing about classroom policies (me taking attendance at all, me requesting that the classroom be quiet, etc.) I was able to take the time to clarify the policies and address student concerns sooner rather than later, for which I am grateful.
edwebb - October 15, 2010 at 3:48 pm
For some years in most classes I have circulated a paper questionnaire around midterm asking five questions about students’ experiences in the class, both as a way to help me change course if necessary, and also to prompt them to reflect. Now I have automated the process more, by turning the questionnaire into a google form and embedding that in the LMS (moodle) site for each course. I think it makes a difference in how students think about the arc of the course and their learning and, like midterm exams (which I mostly see as a necessary evil), can help consolidate their grasp of materials covered up that point by encouraging them to see the big picture rather than class-by-class or week-by-week.
kfoxt11 - October 15, 2010 at 4:34 pm
I conducted midterm evaluations for the first time this past Spring. I liked it. It was nice to address the students concerns in class after the results came out.
I’ll do them again. And I’ll incorporate the idea of them evaluating themselves.
Oh, and I do ask one simple question: how many of you have purchased the required text for this course? ;-)
rtalbert - October 15, 2010 at 9:04 pm
I’m doing four evaluations this semester in my freshman calculus classes: At 3, 6, 9, and 12 weeks. The first three are informal, and they consist of three core questions:
(1) What do you LOVE about this course?
(2) What do you HATE about this course?
(3) If you could change ONE THING about this course, what would it be?
The 6- and 9-week evaluations also have “What’s changed for the better since the last evaluation?” and “What’s changed for the worse since the last evaluation?” In other words, the evaluations are brief, frequent, informal, and intended to capture only the things students feel most strongly about (and filter out the minutiae that doesn’t ultimately matter).
The 12-week evaluation is the official college-administered evaluation.
We’re at the end of week 7 right now, so I’ve given the first two evaluations. After the first evaluation I set aside half a class one day to discuss their responses, which were all over the map in both the positive and negative sides of comments. I changed some things that made sense and made my case for why other things wouldn’t change. After the 6-week evaluation, the “love” part of the questions had doubled in responses and the “hate” part shrunk by half and mostly consisted of “I don’t really hate anything about this class”, which is saying a lot given that it’s calculus and I’m a hard professor.
My hope is that students will do the official evaluation having been well-practice in writing evaluations and having gotten their pet peeves out of their system and being ready to write about only the big issues that are left over, whether positive or negative. And I hope they realize that if they articulate themselves well on these evaluations, their voice will be heard.
acavender - October 16, 2010 at 8:35 pm
Lots of great commentary here–please keep it coming! I hadn’t thought about doing really frequent evaluations; that’s something I might want to consider for one of my courses next semester, where students often find the material challenging (and not what they tend to think of when they enroll in a Political Science course).
lkcoleman - October 17, 2010 at 10:17 pm
I just finished a midterm evaluation. The students haven’t been doing the readings for the course, and we were at least able to talk a bit about why and about what might help. The questions were “What is going well?” “What could change?” “Suggestions for the teacher?” “Suggestions for the students?” and “I wish….” That last one seems unnecessary in view of the others, but a friend uses it and has found it helpful as a catch-all category, sort of “wouldn’t it be nice if…?”
I put up the questions on the board and assigned two volunteers to get the students divided up into groups of three or four–any way of dividing them EXCEPT by where they were sitting: I didn’t want the usual groups for this. They had 1/2 hour to discuss the questions and get a group scribe to put the comments on the board. The rule was that everyone in the group had to agree on a comment to put it up. That didn’t mean everyone agreed with it, just that everyone agreed it was worth discussing. While they were doing that, I was making up my own list up in my office.
I was surprised to find that they wanted to spend MORE time discussing some of the readings that I had taken as background and as not needing discussion. I came away, for once, feeling that I needed to shift course a bit for this class.
lbickmore - October 18, 2010 at 11:01 am
I did this recently–I got a lot of good ideas from my students and had an excellent class subsequent to the midterm feedback. I will say it’s always just a little painful to hear that it’s not perfect, even though I know it’s not. But ultimately it’s good, and I did truly appreciate the feedback.
info8036 - October 18, 2010 at 6:31 pm
I am curious how these evaluations are done? Anonymously? Do the students answer the questions in class via a form and then hand them in? This has been a very interesting exchange; inspiring, too.
csgirl - October 19, 2010 at 6:22 am
The question I have is : what do you do when the suggestions are all unimplementable or contradict each other? Generally, in end of the year evals, I usually hear from some people that they would like more homework, and others that they would like less. If I got these suggestions in the middle of the term, I don’t know what I would do with them. I have my assignment structure all worked out, and don’t think it is right to change it midstream, so even if everyone wanted less homework or fewer exams, I wouldn’t want to make that change. I also have the problem of courses with too much material jammed in, because the students are very unprepared (my department doesn’t believe in prerequisites). I know the students will complain that there is too much material, and they are right, but I don’t know how to fix it midway through a course.
lkcoleman - October 19, 2010 at 10:09 am
I’ve been doing this a while, so I hope it’s OK if I answer a couple of questions from the comments.
To answer info8036, anonymous evaluations are best for midsemester, since students won’t feel free to express themselves otherwise. There are a couple of ways to do that. Individual evaluations can be filled out anonymously in class, or, if there is concern about your ability to identify handwriting, can be word processed at home and handed in. My preference is to have group discussions, since when you have students talking to each other, they think more about what can and can’t be done and can identify what is going well without feeling they’re sucking up. My favorite technique is to have them form groups and have one person in the group take notes. That scribe then puts the “talking points” for his/her group on the board. I’m out of the room when this happens, so I never know who said what, but anyone can freely comment on anything on the board.
Several answers to csgirl’s excellent question:
First, in practice it rarely happens. There is usually at least one change I can make, and I can often explain–or we can discuss–why others aren’t an option.
Second, when we use group discussion technique, the process of talking about the course helps students see that the course has to be set up in certain ways and that there are things that can’t change. If nothing else, they learn from thinking about how the course is structured and from hearing how other students have different views about how the course might work.
Third, students often know of options they can recommend to peers who are struggling. And if you have people who are having trouble with the material, you can recommend study groups–the group evaluation experience has just supplied them with some ready-made acquaintances in the class.
And finally, the mere fact of asking shows that you’re concerned about their learning; sometimes it’s more about the communication than anything.
susangautsch - October 20, 2010 at 7:19 pm
Ever since I started doing midterm evals I always get nice course evals with comments like “she cares about her students, listens to our feedback and actually does something about it.” Can’t beat that!
I give them extra credit to give midway feedback with a Google Form I created. 3 simple questions: “1. What’s working for you in this class? 2. What’s not? 3. If you were teaching this class, what would you do differently or better? Be specific please because I’ll do my best to heed your advice.” They get a secret code in the submission confirmation to submit later for the extra credit (this assures their anonymity — even tho many of them voluntarily include their name in their comments.) Then, I do as I say, try to heed their advice. Next class session, I go over their collective advice. 60%ish of the time, they have good suggestions that most of the time are super simple to implement immediately. 20%ish of the time they contradict each other and I decide what is best and tell ‘em why. 20%ish are things that I just can’t or shouldn’t do and I say so.