Midterm Student Perception of Learning

This week many of us who are working in universities that organize their learning in semesters are in the middle of our term. Therefore, I would like to share timely research and potential approaches on how to capture data on how students are perceiving the learning environment that you have created. I have shared similar posts in the past on this blog, such as on October 25, 2024 entitled, “Midterm Learning Status.” This blog shares information on midterm perceptions as they relate to end of term student evaluations of teaching (SETs). There is extensive literature on the bias and limited use of SETs. I have shared several posts including Sep 2018, Will my student evaluations decrease; Dec 2018, Availability of cookies during an academic course session; Feb 2020, Even ‘valid’ SETs are unfair]; and Feb 2021, Evaluating Student Evaluations of Teaching: A Review of Measurement and Equity Bias." In all of this research, authors confirm that "SETs have low or no correlation with learning". Furthermore, they found that women faculty, faculty of color, and other marginalized groups are subject to a disadvantage.

This week I would like to share two articles/websites and websites that may help further enhance how you gain insights on how students are processing information and how you might tweak your teaching approach. The first website is from the University of Maine CTL where they share the Benefits of Using Mid-Semester Feedback:

Provide a way to see what is working and what isn’t working in your course so that it can be corrected.
Positively impacts student/instructor relationships; how are students feeling about your teaching and what they are getting out of the course.
Provides valuable insight to the student experience, perceptions, learning, and other variables (Mohanty, Gretes, Flowers, Algozzine, & Spooner, 2005).
Can easily identify remedied obstacles to learning (Yao & Grady, 2005).
Creates better understanding of the course evaluation process as a whole (Davis, 2009).
Can result in better end of semester student evaluations.
Can be customized to target specific interventions (Huxham et al, 2008).
Demonstrates an active investment in educational development and self-improvement (Nilson, 2010).
Can help build a professional network around teaching (Svinicki & McKeachie, 2011).

They also offer example questionnaires:

Example Midterm Evaluation (University of Tennessee Chattanooga)
Teaching Resources: Sample Midterm Evaluations (UC Berkeley)
Mid-Semester Feedback (University of Texas at Austin)
Mid-Semester Formative Feedback (University of Connecticut)

The second is an article entitled, “Gathering Mid-semester Feedback (MSF): Three Variations to Improve Instruction” by Payette and Brown (2018). The authors share a well-known holistic approach for gathering data on effective teaching, which includes a pre-observation of a class, observation and post-observation discussion. At the end of the observation a MSF is offered to the students. The data is anonymous, aggregated and shared with the instructor during the debrief, where “closing the loop” suggestions are offered. During the MSF, typical questions that are asked of the students include:

What is helping your learning in the course?
What is hindering your learning in the course?
What suggestions do you have for improving this course?

The author suggest variations in the standard MSF, which include:

The Bare Bones Questionnaire (BBQ), which involves a structured, highly efficient, peer-centered feedback-collection protocol (Snooks et al., 2004). Here are the steps:
- An instructor invites a facilitator to visit during the last 20 minutes of class. The facilitator distributes a handout to students, who work in small groups responding to the questions:
  - What does the instructor do in the class that helps you learn?
  - What hinders your learning in this class?
  - What are the two specific suggestions of ways to improve your learning in this class?

The authors suggest another variance called “DIY MSF.” In this approach, the instructor offers an online survey (ideally, the questions have been validated). And/Or instructors can offer a Collaborative Survey, in which students, arranged randomly in groups, report on prompts through use of a shared Google Doc (Veeck et al., 2016).

What should your instructor stop doing?
What should your instructor start doing?
What should your instructor continue doing?

References

University of Maine CTL (2025). How to collect Midterm semester feedback on teaching. Retrieved from https://umaine.edu/citl/homepage/instructional-resources/teaching-resources-2/building-mid-semester-evaluations-of-teaching-into-your-teaching-practice/.

Payette, P. R., & Brown, M. K. (2018). Gathering Mid-Semester Feedback: Three Variations to Improve Instruction. IDEA Paper #67. IDEA Center, www.ideaedu.org