Date

March 12, 2024

Type

Resource

Owner

Joel Vanner

Starting a Mid-Course Survey

Why are mid-course surveys valuable?

Incorporating a mid-course survey is an effective and timely intervention that helps you hear from students about how the course is going (Sozer, Zeybekoglu & Kaya, 2019). Using this easy strategy, you could:

• Invite dialogue about the student learning experience
• Make a teaching change when you can act on it
• Help students reflect on their own learning in the course and practice metacognition
• Help students see how you value their feedback
• Receive better feedback on final course surveys

What things do you hope to learn?

Starting considerations

Designing a mid-course survey involves consideration of what information you hope to gather. This could include student satisfaction, confidence with concepts, effectiveness of teaching methods and more. Here are some question categories to consider:

Course Content and Structure

• Relevance of the course material to the learning objectives
• Clarity and organization of the course syllabus and schedule
• Appropriateness of the workload and assignments
• Quality and usefulness of the reading materials and resources

Instruction and Delivery

• Clarity and effectiveness of the instructor's explanations
• Instructor's knowledge of the subject matter
• Availability and helpfulness of the instructor outside of class
• Effectiveness of online tools and platforms used for teaching (if applicable)

Engagement and Interaction

• Opportunities for student participation and engagement in class
• Quality of discussions and interactions between students and the instructor
• Support for group work and collaboration among students

Feedback and Assessment

• Timeliness and helpfulness of feedback on assignments and exams
• Fairness and clarity of grading policies and criteria
• Usefulness of assessments in promoting learning

Student Self-Survey of Learning Outcomes

• Student's self-assessed understanding and mastery of the subject matter
• How well the course has helped improve specific skills or knowledge
• Confidence in applying the course material in real-world situations

For hybrid or fully online courses

Consider the following question categories as options:

• Effectiveness of the online components such as presentations, audio, and video in supporting learning
• Ease of navigation and accessibility of online materials such as lecture notes, slides, and readings
• Effectiveness of methods used to promote student engagement and interaction in an online environment, such as discussion forums, group projects, and live Q&A sessions
• Flexibility in terms of deadlines and time management requirements for online learners

Developing questions

When developing questions, you could focus on areas of the course that you are particularly interested in assessing such as pacing, clarity of materials, or levels of engagement. Then, there are different methods to consider such as focus groups or surveys. Surveys facilitate both closed and open question types, allowing for a mix of quantitative and qualitative feedback. In addition, feel free to consult Microsoft Copilot for question ideas.

Example open-ended questions (short answer)

Example closed-ended questions (Likert)

Using Likert scales in your survey allows you to quantify insights.

Keep-Start-Stop suggestion

The Keep-Start-Stop model is a simple yet effective framework for collecting feedback.

Tools to Create a Mid-Course Survey

Use the down arrows on the right to expand a tool and see more information.

Acting on Student Responses from a Mid-Course Survey

What might I do with mid-course survey feedback?

Once you’ve determined how and what to collect, it is important to process and reflect on your students’ responses. You may want to consider the following approaches:

Analyze the feedback

For closed-ended questions, use statistical analysis to quantify insights; Microsoft Forms and Qualtrics are helpful in this area, creating graphs and maps.

Analyze open-ended questions for common themes and suggestions. Although you shouldn’t ignore outlier comments, focus on general trends. Payette and Brown (2018) suggest sorting the data into a few different buckets:

Small changes to make immediately or in the coming weeks

More substantive changes to shift to a future semester

Changes that can’t be implemented because they conflict with a learning goal

Communicate back to students

Sharing what you learned and how you plan to address it is an important part of the feedback process because it shows students that you are committed to their learning. Focus on themes; it is not necessary to address every comment. You could begin by thanking students for their input followed by a quick presentation and/or larger conversation. Either way, share the data in a way that feels comfortable and fosters the classroom culture you are striving for.

More on Mid-Course Surveys and Student Feedback

• Check out Sara’s article “Checking In with Students and Applying Their Feedback”
• Consider requesting a friendly classroom observation from us. We’ll spend time talking about what you are looking for and offer feedback that focuses on strategies to overcome the challenges you identify from mid-course survey feedback.

References

Payette, P. R. & Brown, M. K. (2018) Gathering mid-semester feedback: Three variations to improve instruction. IDEA Paper #67. IDEA Center, Inc. Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED588349

Sozer, E. M., Zeybekoglu, Z., & Kaya, M. (2019). Using mid-semester course evaluation as a feedback tool for improving learning and teaching in higher education. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 44(7), 1003-1016. Retrieved from https://go.exlibris.link/CMSNJjqt

Bates College. (2016). Examples of Classroom Assessment Techniques. Retrieved from https://www.bates.edu/research/files/2016/08/assessments_examples.pdf

Additional Resources