Many of us are reaching the mid-semester mark and students are anticipating or completing midterm exams. Perhaps you are in the throes of grading.  Now is a good time to think about letting your students grade you, in the sense of evaluating your teaching. Think of this as a type of formative assessment, an opportunity for you to make corrections to your teaching strategies and clarify student misconceptions.

There are several ways to obtain feedback and these evaluations do not need to be lengthy. Examples and resources are explored below. Popular among instructors I’ve talked to are short, anonymous surveys, offered either online or on paper. Blackboard and other course management systems allow you to create surveys where student responses are anonymous but you can see who has responded and who has not, making it easy to track. You want to keep these evaluations focused with three or four questions, which might include: What is working in the class/what is not working? What change(s) would you suggest to improve [class discussions/lectures/lab sessions]? What is something you are confused about? Have you found [specific course assignment] to be a useful learning activity?

As the Yale Center for Teaching and Learning states on their website page Midterm Student Course Evaluations: “Midterm course evaluations (MCE) are a powerful tool for improving instructors’ teaching and students’ learning.  … MCE provide two critical benefits for teaching and learning: the temporal advantage of improving the course immediately, and the qualitative benefit of making teaching adjustments specific to the particular needs and desires of current students. In addition, MCE generally produce better quality feedback than end-of-term evaluations since students have a shared stake in the results and instructors can seek clarification on any contradicting or confusing responses.” The Yale site offers useful examples, strategies, and resources.

Michigan State University Academic Advancement Network offers a comprehensive guide with Mid-term Student Feedback, which includes research citations as well as examples. Here, too, you will find a list of resources from other universities on the topic, as well as more in-depth methods to gain student feedback. There is also a section with tips on effective use of information gained from student feedback.

A sampling survey-type midterm evaluations can be found in PDF format at the UC Berkeley Center for Teaching and Learning: Teaching Resources: Sample Midterm Evaluations. This document will get you off and running with little effort.

Ideally you will be using the results on the midterm exam or other learning assessment as a gauge along with the teaching evaluations. If the learning assessment is indicating gaps in content understanding, you can see how it aligns with feedback gained from the student evaluations. The value is that you can make timely course corrections. Another plus—students will see that you are genuinely interested in your teaching and their learning.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: Pixabay.com