The Mid-Term Tune-Up: Getting Student Feedback Before it is Too Late

Have you ever read a comment like the one above on one of your course evaluations, often months after you have taught a course? How did it make you feel? If you are like me, reading such a comment was quite frustrating. It was frustrating not only because I found it hard to believe that a student would end any course feeling this way (how could he or she go through the motions without asking for help, how did I not realize that there was a student that I was not “reaching”?), but also because it was too late to do anything for this student or to change what I was doing.

This comment, from a course evaluation of a class I taught in 2001, made me realize that I needed to do something to garner feedback from my students before the end of the semester. Therefore, I decided it was time to develop a strategy to solicit feedback from my students—at the mid-term— before it was too late. That way, I would be able to address their concerns, and even change the course, to meet my students’ needs, if necessary.

WHAT IS THE MID-TERM TUNE-UP? The “Mid-term Tune-up” is an evaluation tool for requesting feedback from one’s students at the mid-term (well, it could be used any time during a semester or work-shop), and not just at its completion, as is the case with most courses and workshops. Just as every car needs a tune-up to see what is working well and what needs to be repaired, so do most classes and instructors! The Tune-up typically consists of two questions, although I occasionally add one or two additional questions. Table 1 contains the prompt and questions of a Tune-up I used recently. A question that I have begun to include more recently (see Item #4 in Table 1) asks students whether or not they give me permission to share their responses in a publication or conference, while also emphasizing that their permission or refusal to share their comments will not affect their academic standing. I plan to add a request for inclusion in my own digital portfolio in subsequent Tune-ups. (NOTE: This is for Institutional Review Board purposes, as well as to inform my students about how I might use their responses). I inform all of them also that their responses will be shared with the class. In cases where a student might post an inflammatory remark about another student, I will delete the reference to the student in question.

I developed the idea based on some approaches I had learned about at the Uni-versity of Virginia Teaching Resource Center (see http://trc.virginia.edu/home.htm) while a doctoral student and graduate instructor. The first approach that influenced the development of the Tune-up, the “one-minute paper” (see Magnan, 1991, for a description), was an excellent approach to use in my face-to-face (F2F) classes, but not in my online ones, particularly those taught asynchronously. And, although a second approach that I discovered, “anonymous feedback” (see Martini, 1998) could be developed easily for my online students, I found it to be too open-ended for what I wanted to learn from my students. Specifically, I wanted to learn what was working well for my students and what was not. Another approach, the “mid term evaluation” (see Loevinger, 1993) seemed to fit what I had hoped to learn from my students, although the questions were dif-ferent and, as a former elementary school teacher, I just had to make the idea more “interesting” for my students. So, the Midterm Tune-up idea was born!

For the past few years, I have used Zoomerang (see http://info.zoomerang.com/), an online survey tool, for administering the Mid-term Tune-up. I maintain a free account with Zoomerang. It allows me to develop a survey with up to 30 questions for as many as 100 respondents. The data are available (which I copy and paste to word processing or HTML editing software) for up to 10 days. After ten days, to access the responses, I would have to upgrade to one of its subscriptions (which are much more expensive than not having to pay anything!). Many other online survey tools exist, such as SurveyMonkey (see http://www.surveymonkey.com/) and Question-Pro (see http://www.questionpro.com/), among many others. The features vary from tool to tool, but many offer a free version, or at least a free trial version that you can test out. I use Zoomerang because it was one of the first online survey tools available for free and it continues to serve my purposes for a simple, easily accessed online survey tool. It is easy to modify previously created surveys. Plus, although I know how the tool works, it is very easy to use.

I have learned many things as a result of using the Mid-term Tune-up in my classes over the past few years, not only about my students but also about my teaching. I have learned, for instance, that some students have felt overwhelmed by some of the work I assign, hated a particular text, and/or did not like working in groups.

Some of these things I could not change, whereas others I did not want to change. More importantly, the Tune-up provides a means for my students to communicate with me about what helps and impedes their learning, in a risk-free way.

For my online courses, I always provide feedback in written format as a PDF file that may be downloaded from one week’s lecture. Although at times redundant, I make sure to respond to each comment. In my F2F courses, I always share the students’ responses as a handout and then discuss realistic solutions with the students.

I do not know if it is having over a decade of teaching under my belt or the Mid-term Tune-up, but I am finding that, like my end-of-semester course evaluations, the Midterm Tune-ups tend to be generally very positive. In places where I can make changes, I make them. In areas in which changes cannot be made, I explain why. Perhaps it is this simple communication in a risk-free environment that has helped to improve things all around, as well as my teaching and my students’ learning!