Your semester is off to a good start and the class is settling into a routine. You are getting to know your students as they work on course assignments, and you might be wondering what could help your students succeed.

You can easily enhance your teaching effectiveness and gain a better understanding of your students' experiences in your class. Responding to student needs early in the semester will increase student engagement, even as it provides you with informative feedback on your teaching and improves the quality of end-of-course evaluations.

If you want to get quick feedback from your students you can ask them to respond anonymously to three questions:

1. What is helping you learn in this class?
2. What would help you learn better?
3. What would you change if you were the instructor?

You can ask your students to respond on paper at the end of class and turn in their responses before they leave. Alternatively, you can use Poll Everywhere and make student responses anonymous. After you review your students' feedback, remember to thank them and respond to their concerns.

We also invite you to participate in an Early-Semester Feedback program offered and facilitated by the Center for Teaching and Learning. If you are interested, please sign up for the early-semester feedback program by Wednesday, October 7th, 2015. (If you'd like to preview the questions, they are available here). After signing up, a member of the CTL staff will set up the survey.

After your students complete the survey, CTL staff will help you interpret the survey results and decide how to best respond to your students' needs. Sometimes your response might include making a change to an aspect of the course. Sometimes your response might be a conversation with the students in which you explain the rationale you used in designing the course, and how they might engage better with it.

All feedback is confidential, anonymous, and provides a way to assess and be responsive to students' needs while the semester is in progress.

What are the benefits?

Early-semester feedback can help you manage your classroom and enhance student learning. The survey can help you understand what is working well and what might be improved. One advantage of this approach over the standard end-of-semester course evaluations is that early-semester feedback occurs early enough in the semester that you can make changes in the course right away and see the effects of the changes. Students respond positively when their comments result in changes to the course, leading to improved student attitudes about the class and/or instructor in the end-of-semester evaluations (Keutzer, 1993; Overall and Marsh, 1979).

To learn more, read the Weekly Teaching Note: Early Semester Feedback: How is my Teaching?

Resources:

• Keutzer, C. S. (1993). Midterm evaluation of teaching provides helpful feedback to instructors. Teaching Psychology, 20(4), 238–240.
• Overall, J. U., & Marsh, H. W. (1979). Midterm feedback from student: Its relationship to instructional improvement and students' cognitive and affective outcomes. Journal of Educational Psychology, 71(6), 856–865.
• Weekly Teaching Note: Early Semester Feedback: How is my Teaching? Accessed 10/1/2015 at http://nyit.edu/ctl/blog/how_is_my_teaching.

Contributor:

Olena Zhadko, PhD
Manager, Course Development
Center for Teaching and Learning
New York Institute of Technology