9.3 How to implement a mid-course feedback process
1. Determine your goals
Before starting collecting feedback, take some time to reflect on what specific goals you have. Some aspects you may want to collect information on include:
- Students’ perceptions of your expectations and objectives
- Student own expectations and desired outcomes
- Students’ perceptions of learning activities
- Impact of your teaching activities
Though you may have questions about many different aspects of the course and your teaching, we recommend you limit the focus to areas where you are willing to make a change.
2. Formulate your questions
These resources provide concrete suggestions for selecting and/or writing good questions:
- Identifying Topics for Questions Links to an external site. (scroll down to Identifying Topics for Questions) - University of Toronto Centre for Teaching Support and Innovation
- Sample questions Links to an external site. (short) - McGill University
We recommend that you limit your inquiry to 3-4 questions in order to make analysis manageable and to ensure you have the opportunity to respond to and/or act on feedback.
3. Determine how you will seek feedback
Mid-course feedback can be conducted anonymously via Canvas surveys or Qualtrics. While you may already be familiar with Canvas and the Quiz tool used to create an anonymous survey, students may question whether the feedback they provide is truly anonymous since their personal information is already in the system.. If you use Canvas to collect feedback, be sure to select the option to Keep Submission Anonymous Links to an external site. and discuss this with your students. Qualtrics surveys are anonymous by default.
4. Explanations, timing, and guidance for students
It is helpful to explain the mid-course feedback process (and its goals) to your students as it may be unfamiliar to them. Take the time to differentiate between mid-course feedback and the end-of-course student evaluations of teaching.
Collect the feedback part-way through the term, after students have had a chance to experience your teaching and while you still have time to make modifications based on the feedback.
You may also wish to provide some guidance to students on how to provide you with good feedback, as this may not be a skill they have practice with. The Faculty Innovation Center at the University of Texas has a resource on helping students provide useful response Links to an external site. [pdf].