Responding to Student Evaluations Mid-Academic Year
There’s one email I eagerly anticipate around New Year's Day: the announcement that my student evaluation results are available for viewing. Some people choose to ignore this email (and, for good reasons, as we know how flawed this process is). I’m in the camp that believes, despite their biases, this is helpful data to read carefully and reflect on, especially when your promotion case is based on excellence in teaching. Engaging with student feedback, whether exit tickets or formal evaluations, and comparing the data to your own perceptions of how the course went are parts of being a scholarly teacher.
Unfortunately, the few weeks between the end of the fall semester and the start of spring don’t leave much time for making major changes to a course design, especially if you are in the middle of piloting a new course.
Still, I think it’s important to take some time to reflect on what students are saying, for better and for worse. In this post, I’m sharing some quick, short-term strategies for responding to mid-year feedback.
Short-Term Strategies
Identify aspects of your course that need immediate triage. Locate two to three patterns that need to be (and can easily be) addressed before the next semester starts: learning management system organization or access issues, communication with students, office hours availability, etc. Don’t bite off more than you can chew, but do prioritize the small fixes that can dramatically improve your students’ learning environment, in person or online.
Make a note of personalized questions you want to add to your mid-term feedback survey or institutional end-of-semester evaluation. Is there a core aspect of your course or teaching philosophy that students are not mentioning in their qualitative comments? Is there a particular aspect of your course design that is evolving and that you want targeted feedback on? For example, one of the questions I might add to my course evaluations concerns creativity: Which assignment in this course best helped you develop your creativity, and why? Another example: What in-class activities were most helpful for your learning and development, and why? Sometimes, the activities we least expect are the most meaningful to our students!
If you are feeling totally overwhelmed by the data, schedule an appointment with an instructional consultant at your campus’s teaching center or with a trusted mentor to review your evaluations. It is okay (and even expected) to feel anxious or overwhelmed by the results. It’s also easy to be way too hard on yourself if you identify as a perfectionist. Having a second set of eyes on your evals can help you cut through the noise, identify patterns you might not have recognized initially, and prioritize elements of your course that need attention. Sometimes all we need is some reassurance and support, but, in this case, it requires putting our pride to the side and knowing when to ask for help.
When in Doubt, Find a Trusted Peer Reviewer
My final piece of advice? Don’t rely solely on student evaluations to improve your teaching. Invest in peer feedback from faculty inside and outside of your discipline. Having senior faculty in your home department observe you teach can be incredibly helpful, and these observations produce crucial documentation for your promotion dossier. It may be possible, through your campus teaching center or other office, to request a formative or summative observation, too.
As always, thanks for reading. If you have questions about any of my content or have ideas for collaboration, please contact me at hello@gabriellestecher.com.
