Collecting feedback from your students in the middle of the term allows you to understand how students are responding to your pedagogical approaches, reflect on their suggestions while your experience is fresh, and subsequently implement changes to your course or teaching that can enhance student learning.
Formative student feedback – that is, feedback that is collected at the mid-point of a course, rather than summatively or at the end– can provide important insights into what is working well and not working well in your course design or teaching. Student feedback can also play an important role in your professional development as a teacher and enhance communication with students and partnership in the learning experience. Finally, collecting student feedback can assist with gathering evidence of your effectiveness as a teacher that can be integrated into teaching portfolios required for tenure and promotion.
The MacPherson Institute offers an in-depth module on the topic of Collecting Feedback on Your Teaching in our Learning Catalogue. We highly recommend starting with this module if collecting student feedback is a new topic or endeavour for you.
What is provided below is an excerpt from that module with some brief step-by-step instructions and resources for designing a survey to collect student feedback, developing a plan to administer the survey, and debriefing with students.
Design Your Feedback Survey
Let’s create a quick student-friendly mid-term formative feedback survey that you can easily adapt for your class. You can build your survey using tools like Google Forms, Microsoft Forms, or your institution’s Learning Management System (LMS). Aim to include a mix of open-ended questions for detailed insights and scaled questions for quick, quantitative feedback. Aim to keep your survey between 3-12 questions.
Before diving into the process of collecting feedback, take a moment to reflect on why you want to gather feedback on your teaching. Consider what specific aspects of your teaching or course you are most interested in learning about. Are you looking to understand student engagement, the clarity of your instructional materials, or the effectiveness of your teaching methods? Or something else?
Your survey can include a selection of quantitative (e.g., rating scales) and qualitative (e.g., open-ended) questions aligned with your needs and goals. To help select your survey questions, consult the Mid-Term Formative Feedback Survey Template and Sample Questions resource. Feel free to highlight questions you would like to use and/or create different types of questions using this template, focusing on the specific feedback you wish to gather.
At a minimum, an effective formative mid-term survey should ask students the following key questions:
- What is working well in this course so far?
- What is not working well?
- What specific suggestions do you have to improve the course and your experience as a learner?
Next, create your survey using either a word processing tool or an online form platform (e.g., Microsoft Forms, Google Forms, Mentimeter, or even a paper-based option). Be sure to set your survey settings to collect responses anonymously, as this often leads to more honest and constructive feedback from students.
Survey Templates: Ready to Use!
The following two survey templates, created with Microsoft Forms, are available to you to duplicate, modify, and implement in your courses.
One template is designed for small classes (https://tinyurl.com/MSFSmall) and the other is an option for larger classes (https://tinyurl.com/MSF-Large).
Feel free to adapt and make use of these as you see fit! Or you can create your own survey from scratch and input your selected questions.
Integrating a Survey in Avenue to Learn
If you would like to integrate your survey into Avenue to Learn (A2L), please review this Avenue to Learn Knowledge Base resource that provides a video tutorial and step-by-step instructions for administering a survey in A2L.
Consider the logistical elements of administering your survey. Reflect on the following questions as you finalize your approach:
- How long will the survey be available for students to complete?
- When and how will you introduce it to the class?
- How will you incentivize survey completion to increase response rates?
- When will you set aside time to read and reflect on the responses?
- How and when will you follow up with students to share what you’ve learned and the changes they can or cannot expect?
Once these plans are finalized, you are ready to administer your survey!
Following the distribution of your survey, and as your review and consider those results, you can use the Template – Slides for Feedback Debrief with Students to help guide your discussion with the class 1-2 weeks after collecting feedback.
You can also reach out and submit a request for support if you would like to connect with an Educational Developer from the MacPherson Institute to debrief the results of student feedback you have collected and possible pathways for your teaching or course design.