It’s that time of the semester when faculty, students, all of us are feeling the pressure of our workloads. We look at our syllabi, wondering if we still have time to cover everything, we look at the stacks of ungraded student assignments and wonder how we’re going to make the sprint to Thanksgiving break. Certainly, our students are feeling the pressure too.
One of the ways we can promote wellbeing and engagement, then, is to check in with our students and evaluate how they are doing in a way that is different from our ongoing assessments. If you missed it, we recommend you check out the recent Faculty Forum post Checking In: Strengthening Student Success and Wellbeing Through Midsemester Engagement.
Mid-semester surveys offer you an opportunity to facilitate students’ reflection about their learning process, in addition to demonstrating to students that you care about their progress in the course. There are plenty of sample questions you can adapt to fit the needs of your course, but there are some essential steps in the mid-semester survey process that are necessary for their effective use.
When designing your survey, keep the length to 4-5 questions only and ask about any specific innovations you are doing so you get targeted feedback.
Make time during class for students to complete the survey. This signals to students that their thoughtful reflections are important and will make it more likely that you’ll get sufficient responses.
After reviewing this feedback, evaluating what adjustments you can make to support their success, and identifying what additional campus resources you can recommend, discuss the survey results and your plan in class.
If you’d like to see an example of mid-semester surveys in action and hear from colleagues about their experiences with this engagement strategy, check out Trace Jordan (Clinical Professor, College of Arts and Science) and Beth Latimer’s (Clinical Associate Professor, Rory Meyers College of Nursing) TeachTalk: Enhancing Student Learning Through Midsemester Feedback and their session slides.
We have some resources below, but if you’d like help designing and implementing student feedback surveys, contact your liaison or reach out to us at asteaching@nyu.edu.
Tools for Mid-Semester Surveys:
More faculty examples:
- 10-19-22 TeachTalk: Utilizing Student Feedback To Improve Teaching Practice
- Utilizing Student Feedback to Improve Teaching Practice Slides
Sample Questions for Anonymous and Mid-semester Feedback Surveys