I firmly believe that for effective teaching and learning in a class, you need two-way feedback. That means that not only do I give the students feedback, but they also get to give me feedback. Georgia Tech, like most places, have a standardized end-of-term course survey. However, I want to be able to fix things on the fly. To do this, I implement a quick midterm survey through our course management system. I provide a modest incentive to the students to take the anonymous survey (free credit for a reading assignment or three clicker questions), and this time I got a phenomenal response rate. (The survey really is anonymous since our course management system can record a score in the gradebook for taking the survey without attaching a name to the responses.)

Some of the survey questions are about amount of homework (about right, maybe a bit too much), pace of class (about right), and my availability (good). However, the useful questions are the open-ended ones. I ask them two questions about what there needs to be more of, less of, and the same amount of both on the part of the respondent and the instructor. I also ask for general feedback. The questions asking for more/less/same are trying to emphasize the shared responsibility for learning. Not surprisingly, I saw a lot of students who say they need to study more and procrastinate less. I’ve grown accustomed to that. Someday, I should survey at end of term to find out if they actually do more of that after midterm. The instructor version of that question didn’t provide many deep insights this time, although it was a chance for the students’ to show their senses of humor. (One wants me to wear clown hats, another wants me to dance, and yet another wants me to be sure I do the same amount of eating of breakfast. The last one is interesting since I’m pretty sure I’ve never mentioned breakfast in class.)

I was really looking forward to the general comments question this time around. I’ve taken to using a heavy dose of active learning in my classes this semester. Since my students are primarily juniors and seniors, I figure that they’ve not had many of these experiences lately. I’ve not had in-class resistance, but I figured it was possible for them to be secretly resisting. I was also curious about how they were feeling about clickers in an upper division course. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the only comments about clickers were positive (of the “keeps me thinking” or “more clicker questions” variety). There were also lots of positive comments about the opportunities I give them to work on things in groups in class. There were, however, also some negatives. In one case, the student freely admitted to hating working in groups but begrudgingly acknowledge the pedagogical value. Others called for more debriefing time, something that I’ve been working on. It’s good to see students giving feedback that they want more of that. Calls for more straight-up lecture? I think only two out of nearly 50 responses! There were lots of really complimentary remarks about the course and my teaching, which was nice to see. About three students brought up the jigsaw that I blogged about previously, all in a negative way. However, that small number of complaints doesn’t suggest abandoning the teaching and learning activity. It does give me some things to think about as I consider using it again soon.

What did the students grouse about? Not surprisingly, the workload, and mainly the writing assignments. Of course, the survey was due on Friday and the second (of two) writing assignments is due tomorrow, so this was probably somewhat a result of proximity. I think writing in a technical course is probably one of those things that are hard to appreciate in the moment. However, I hope that the utility will become more apparent as they move on. There were also a few complaints about the length of the first test and guidance in preparation for the test. I think some are looking for hand-holding (or aren’t paying attention), but others want things that are reasonable.

Overall, it seems that things are on the right path in the course, but I do have a few small adjustments to make.