Support Interaction→ Elicit Conversation→ Gather formative feedback
Structured mid-semester evaluations can be used to gather formative feedback on what the students like/dislike about a course, what they feel needs change/improvement, and students’ ideas on how to carry out the improvement. The constructive criticism from students will help you identify the teaching methods that best contribute to students’ understanding of the material. These evaluations also provide the unique advantage of exposing students to what their peers think of a course’s strengths and weaknesses. Mid-semester course surveys can be easily designed and administered at any point during the course of the semester by the individual instructor using LumiNUS surveys. Survey responses can be processed within the boundaries of each module’s domain and are only accessible to the individual instructor.
The key benefits of gathering such formative feedback during the semester is in its flexibility to customise the instrument to address specific details of the course, its immediacy in reporting the data and in implementing the necessary changes.
- Identify the purpose and goals of employing mid-semester feedback
- Plan your questions based on your identified purpose and goals, and ask clear questions.
- Reinforce to students that you are looking for constructive feedback that you can respond to during the semester
- Schedule mid-semester feedback at a time that you think is appropriate to the course
- Share and discuss the results with students
- Make small modest changes
NUS Resources
Strategies for gathering formative feedback
Gathering formative feedback through mid-semester evaluations
Resources
Teaching matters: What is mid-course feedback? University of Edinburgh
Gathering feedback during remote teaching and learning: questions and tools to use, Vanderbilt University
