Soliciting Formative Feedback During Your Course

Using formative feedback primarily to refine and adjust one’s teaching during one’s course is always encouraged for all instructors. When eliciting formative feedback throughout the term, be transparent with your students and let them know that you want to hear about what is and is not working so that you can create the best learning experience possible. For the Winter term, in particular, it would be valuable to explicitly encourage students to provide feedback on their experiences in the course prior to the disruption resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as their experiences during and through the transition to remote teaching. And as we transition to teaching during the Spring and Summer online, thinking about how you might proactively gather feedback throughout your course (particularly if this is your first time teaching online) will be very important.

When considering formative feedback it is critical not just to read student feedback, but to then acknowledge that you’ve ‘heard’ what they’ve shared, and then act, making whatever changes are possible. Closing the feedback loop with students will encourage students to continue to provide high quality feedback to you. Language you might use with your students could sound like, “You said (or last term the class said)___ , and ____ is what I am going to do address that.” You may also say, “You said (or the students last term said) ____, but I can’t change it and ____ is why.” Finally, when receiving feedback that is conflicting (e.g. half of the students report that there is too much group discussion, and the other half find the group discussions beneficial and want more), put the problem to the class: “Some of you like ___ and some of you don’t like ____. What should we do about this?”

Being transparent, giving students a voice and agency over their learning experiences and validating their experiences, has a tremendous impact on student learning and instructor/student relationships. It builds trust, opens lines of communication, and improves the classroom climate. Knowing that you care about them as learners, students become more forgiving of your missteps and mistakes. If you're teaching remotely, it’s possible to solicit anonymous feedback from your students by using the survey function in Brightspace, or through Microsoft Forms in Office 365. There are a number of resources provided below to help you think about how you might approach gathering or using formative feedback in your teaching.

Employing formative feedback for the primary purpose of improving the teaching and learning, consistently produces an additional byproduct: summative course evaluations that are far more positive. So, refining your own practices with the use of formative feedback now, may have the spill over benefits for the future when the Dalhousie returns to the institution’s approved policy for end of term SRIs.

The three tips when collecting and using formative feedback? Be open to constructive comments, be responsive, and be transparent. And remember, formative feedback from students is a gift!