Midterm Learning Status

Many of us are nearing the middle of our academic term. While some are offering midterm exams, others are reviewing/supporting PBL benchmarks of student teams. In any case, the middle of the term is an ideal time to gain a sense of student perceptions of learning. Research by the Education Advisory Board (2015) found that “80% of final grades are the same or better than midterm grades.” Of course, there are many variables involved in student performance and final outcomes of the course, one being the student perspective of learning. These midterm perceptions allow an instructor to gather feedback on their perceptions of the teaching methods, course content, and overall learning experience. This can allow for adjustments (if needed) to be made before the end of the term to improve student engagement and outcomes.

To address student perspective, many CTLs offer a service where they can visit the final ten minutes of a class as the instructor departs. The CTL staff divides students into small groups and facilitates a discussion asking students to record their thoughts on prompts. The data is gathered, analyzed, and summarized then shared as an anonymous aggregate for the instructor's consideration. Sample prompts that I have used include:

• What is contributing to student learning in this class, i.e, what is going well?

• What might need improvement to enhance learning?

• What is one concrete action which the instructor can do now to improve learning?

• What is one word that describes how you feel about this course now?

Here are several university CTLs that share their process for collecting midterm perception data:

• Western Michigan University (Veeck, et. al, 2016)

• University of Pittsburgh (Harris & Stevens, 2013)

• University of Kansas (Young et. al, 2019)

• University of Chicago (Cohen, 1980)

If you are interested in more frequent feedback on student perspectives of learning in your courses, an additional approach might be to create a student liaison program. In these programs one student is identified perhaps by the other students and that student gathers feedback on how students believe the course is progressing on a weekly basis. The liaison then shares that data with the instructor as anonymous aggregate ideas for their consideration. 

References

Veeck, A., O'Reilly, K., MacMillan, A., & Yu, H. (2016). The Use of Collaborative Midterm Student Evaluations to Provide Actionable Results. Journal of Marketing Education, 38(3), 157–169. https://doi.org/10.1177/0273475315619652 

Harris, G., & Stevens, D. (2013). The value of midterm student feedback in cross-disciplinary graduate programs. Journal of Public Administration Education, 19(3) 537-558.

Young, K., Joines, J., Standish, T., & Gallagher, V. (2019). Student evaluations of teaching: The impact of faculty procedures on response rates. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 44(1): 37-49.

Cohen. (1980). Effectiveness of student-rating feedback for improving college instruction: A meta-analysis of findings. Research in Higher Education., 13(4), 321–341. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00976252