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[needmorecoffee]

I’m all for a few jedi mind tricks, but would like to distinguish between those tactics or strategies that seek to weed out the discontented and those that seek to increase overall student satisfaction.  As someone concerned about pedagogy and needing to improve student outcomes (ie evaluations) after bombing a course last year I’m up for both, but I’d like to second the use of mid-semester evaluations.

From my limited experience of six years, I’ve decided that about half of student evaluations consists of clarifying expectations and explanations of what we are doing and why – what we tell them – even if we are giving them choices. Much of the rest is consists of what they tell us, ie feedback.

At the two institutions where I have previously taught I utilized the services of the teaching center on campus to conduct mid-course evals. A little over a third of the way in someone would come and administer some sort of evaluation with me out of the room, asking students what was working, what not and how the situation could be improved. I always asked them for general comments or specific feedback on particular issues. Later I’d meet with said evaluator and go over the results, noting what seemed to be areas of consensus satisfaction or dissatisfaction and possible remedial responses.

The next class I’d start by discussing the results with the students and reading all or a selection of student comments. I explained to them that their feedback mattered and we talked about what I was willing to change or not and why. I always changed something, no matter how small, in response, but sometimes something significant and surprising. Students inevitably felt more buy-in for the course and saw me as someone willing to publicly accept criticism and change things while it still mattered to them (during the course and not after).

The only courses I have performed poorly in since I took my PhD in 2003 were courses where I did not conduct such mid-course assessments. We are all often so busy when the semester starts that we soon forget good pedagogy, get swept up in bad habits borne of having to meet pressing deadlines, etc.  Mid-course assessments often remind me of things I know I should be doing and am not and always tell me at least one thing I hadn’t thought of (such as that some student thinks I sweat too much. Thanks).  It’s to my experience the single most effective tool, as opposed to teaching tactic or strategy, for raising student satisfaction, and one I always recommend to new faculty.   The biggest pushback people offer is that they don’t have time, don’t want students to see them as vulnerable, or don’t want to surrendur authority in the classroom. To which I can only respond: Meh, it works.

[anakin]

Good distinction, nmc, and CHIME, CHIME, CHIME. Last semester, I tried a "new" (for me) technique: formative midterm evaluations. I heard about it at all three of the summer workshops/conferences I attended and decided to give it a shot myself.

I have to say that it worked, right off the first time, better than any pedagogical technique I've ever tried, and that the results lasted to final evals.

All I did was develop a short (20-question, 1-5 Likert scale) evaluation split into three parts: the course so far, me, and you (student). That was really useful - for example, I found that as I suspected, my students were putting in nowhere near the recommended amount of time outside class. The formative part came where I asked them 3 open-ended questions: what do you appreciate/what helps you learn; what concerns do you have; what recommendations would you make.

Then I invested the rest of each of 3 large "lectures" doing that formative part. All students had a chance to say what they appreciated/what helps them learn. Then we got to concerns, which is the part on our end-of-semester evals that usually devolves into "Feel free to b*tch anonymously and inappropriately about your highfalutin' and sadly misinformed opinions about my teaching, the course, its relevance in your life, whether it should be included in your major, the workload, the moderate-to-high expectations, the time of day offered, or my clothing, shoe choice, hair cut, or beverage choice."

The trick is to give students a voice, then make them responsible - in front of the gods and everyone. "I hate the book, it's so irrelevant." "Okay, what is your recommendation? It was - really - magical, watching the sprinkling of agitated students deflate once they got their gripe out, then make what turned out to be thoughtful and, for the most part, reasonable expectations. I had swarms of kids up front after class telling me the process was great, they wished their other profs did that, when are my office hours again, etc. etc. I read every single one of the 800 open-ended reviews. I compiled quick quantitative lists of how many kids wrote "We want a study guide for the test" and "Better connection between lessons and text." Then I went back the next class day and told them what they told me. They told me they wanted more IF-ATs, so I changed the lesson quiz format to in-class IF-ATs (big deal, it was only 10% of their total grade!). Even where I didn't make concessions, it was a chance to explain why - for example, why I don't do study guides. IOW, a chance for both me and my students to re-set our expectations.

My end-of-semester evaluations were orders of magnitude better than last spring, AND students carried over the lesson about being responsible in their comments to both the lab evals and the lesson evals: they were monumentally more constructive. There were very few ad hominems.

There are several resources on the web for conducting formative mid-course assessments. I like this, and the associated resources were also very helpful to me in developing this the first time.

"Don't have time"?!? Bullsh!t. You don't have time not to. And you can't have it both ways: whine about crappy students and crappy evals and wanting to do better, and not do something that works so unbelievably well. Besides, you're teaching your students important lessons about interacting with people in power (because really that will never happen again in their lives), honoring a process that you're both deeply invested in, and being responsible and civil. This is not worth teaching?!?

[phlegmatic]

Chime again on mid-semester evals. I have little to add that anakin didn't already say. I have done them every semester I've taught, and I have tried different formats for mid-semester evals, but they have always only been qualitative and always ask about 1) the course, 2) the prof, and 3) the students (as regards their preparation, what's helping and/or hindering their learning, etc).

Students really appreciate having a voice. Even though I take feedback throughout the semester about how the class is going, it's the mid-semester evals--and, most importantly, my serious response to them--that students remember, appreciate, and comment upon positively in end-of-semester evals.

[gamecat]

At my uni they give us the choice of doing on paper or doing it online. I recommend still using the old fashioned way. That way you avoid the coming home late after the bars and completing a teval that is filled with slams and rude language. they tend to write less comments in class, which is fine with me.

the other thing I have done is to give them a preemptive chance to complain about things with an open ended mid-term survey about things they like or don't like for the first section of the course. That way they can complain about your quiz or attendance policy and how much material was on the first exam and they don't hold it all in and get bitter only to trash you on tevals. Let them get it off their chests and have them feel like you care what they think and will make changes for the rest of the semester- that's got to be worth some points.