The halfway point in the semester brings exams, projects, and papers for your students – plenty of opportunities for them to receive feedback about their progress in your course. The middle of the semester is also a good time for you to take the initiative to solicit some quick, informal, anonymous feedback from the students.

Why do a mid-semester evaluation, especially when the semester-end SPOTs are so comprehensive? While SPOTs help you improve the experiences of your future students, a mid-semester evaluation helps your current students. This is your opportunity to check in with your students and correct any small problems or misconceptions before they grow into larger issues. Ideally, students are bringing their concerns to your attention without you needing to survey them. However, absent a whole-class sampling, it can be hard to separate the squeaky wheel from the widespread problem.

A mid-semester evaluation is something you can do at the start of class or the start of a new unit. Ideally, it will take about 5-10 minutes to complete; you can provide a pre-printed form of your own making or students can use scratch paper. Additionally, since you control the format and questions of a mid-semester evaluation, you can tailor this to your specific needs and hunches about the progress of the course. Is the course going wonderfully? What factors are really helping the students? Is the course off to a rocky start? What would help smooth the rest of the way? The goal is to obtain helpful data from your students' perspective.

Hopefully, you are now sold on why you might want to do a mid-semester evaluation and what you might ask. You can opt to have students respond to a handful of short prompts, rank-order readings or activities, or give numerical feedback about different aspects of the course (lab, slides, movies, readings, simulations, etc.). The mechanics of asking vary, of course, depending on what sort of data you are seeking and the changes you might be able to make mid-course.. Below are some common quick instructional feedback questions that you can use to get started.

• Muddiest Moment: What has been the least clear concept / reading / lab so far? What do you wish the professor would cover again or cover differently?
• Three Things: What are three things that the professor does that really helps your learning? What are three things that you wish the professor would do – or do differently – to further support your learning?
• High Point / Low Point: What has been the high point of this course so far? What has been the low point?
• Technology Specific: For LearningStudio Users – How did the online components (discussions, presentations, files, online gradebook, etc) contribute to your learning?
• Technology Specific for Clicker Users – How did the use of clickers in this course support learning or help with discussion?

  The Koehler Center also has some online feedback options you can use. These provide more anonymity to your students and won't require you to take time away from the instructional hour. However, since they are online and anonymous, there's no real way to compel whole-class participation; this means you may get responses from only those students who have especially strong feelings about your course and are thus willing to take the time to respond.

  
  
• Google Docs Forms:
• You can use Google Forms to make your own online mid-semester evaluation. See our tutorial on Google Forms for more information on creating your own Google Forms and instructions on embedding the form into your LearningStudio (eCollege) course shell.
• Use our Template for a Mid Semester Survey in Google Forms. On the top of the page, select Use This Template. Feel free to edit and add your own questions. Follow the instructions on our Google Forms tutorial to embed this into your course shell.

   

   

• Online survey sites: The Koehler Center has an account at Zoomerang.com or you may create your own free account at either Zoomerang.com or SurveyMonkey.com.
• Free Accounts: If you want to use your own free account, set up your account at either Zoomerang.com or SurveyMonkey.com. Create your own questions, then either link to the survey from your course (Announcements might be a good place to do this), or Embed the survey into a content item.
• Koehler Center Account for Zoomerang.com: Using our account will allow for more questions and options. If you are interested in using our account, please contact Romana Hughes r.hughes@tcu.edu. Please allow for 3 weeks lead time to create your survey.

• Pearson LearningStudio (eCollege) Survey Tool:The eLearning staff can create a survey based on your questions and embed it directly into your course. This can be triggered by a certain date/time of your choosing, or be placed in a certain point of the course, such as a particular Unit. If you are interested in this, please allow for 3 weeks lead time for creating the survey and send your request to Romana Hughes r.hughes@tcu.edu.

You can also remind your students that your ability to make use of any feedback is a function of the things you can change. Thus, discussions about class time, room location, individual grades, etc., probably won't result in any immediate, class-wide changes.

Last, once you've gotten all this feedback from your students, reviewed it, and decided what changes you are going to make, let the students know! Close the loop by indicating which adjustments are a result of the concerns or praise they shared with you. Doing so not only communicates that you value their input and are responsive, but will also hopefully send the signal that you'd like to continue to get their feedback about the course as it progresses.