Midterm Feedback

Feedback form with the Carleton Four

A goal of this year's Teaching and Learning Committee is to stimulate the conversation on pedagogy throughout the college. As one means to that end we have prepared a tool to help you obtain useful feedback from students during the semester. It is a form that allows students to provide feedback directly to you, anonymously if they wish.

The form is based on a set of four questions that have been used at other institutions and focus on what is going well and what is going not so well in the course. We have used a paper version of this form in many classes in the physics department with good success, and we on the committee recommend it highly to you. There is a web form that you can print out and use as is, or modify to suit your taste.

Those who help faculty improve their students' learning say that such feedback is best obtained at about the 1/3 point in the term. At this point in the semester, students have (probably) seen enough to make helpful suggestions and there is still enough time to respond where appropriate.

The four questions are:

1. What is going well for your learning in the course? Be as specific as you can.

2. What is not going well for your learning? Again, be specific. List as many things as you can.

3. Based on your answer to the previous question, what can I (the professor) do differently? What can you do differently?

4. Other comments?

Updated 10/10/00 .