Formative Course Assessment

Request an ET&L mid-quarter formative course assessment to improve your course and student learning this quarter.

During a 20-minute duration of class time at mid-quarter, an ET&L instructional consultant will discuss with your students what is helping them learn and how their learning could be improved in your course. We will analyze this anonymous feedback and follow up promptly to assist you with interpretation and potential course improvements, informed by current STEM education research and many years of consultation experience.

As with all ET&L consultations, course assessments are confidential; results are shared only with you, the instructor. Many instructors have found our course assessments and associated reports to be an efficient, manageable way to engage in and document continuous improvement of teaching and course design. 

Research shows that faculty who solicit mid-term feedback from their students achieve higher end-of-term ratings, especially when this feedback is coupled with expert consultation.

Instructor feedback

Excerpts are from instructors' evaluations of ET&L services and are typical of the feedback we receive. These are published with permission from the instructors. Since our work with instructors is confidential, their names are not given.

The comments from the students were generally positive, and that gave me confidence that they were receptive to my style of teaching, which in turn allowed me to relax more. I was very impressed that a service like ET&L even exists at UW. I think it is an extremely useful program, and found the personnel I worked with very professional and supportive.

I always like the student survey part. I tend to get a lot of these, as it helps me understand where the students have issues. The students rarely come to my office to complain or provide feedback, thus the feedback provided mid-quarter is excellent.

The SGID [formative assessment] clued me into many of the concerns the students had with the class; it let me know my weak and strong points. I was able to better structure lectures, engage students, and frame expectations after meeting with ET&L.

Based on mid-term course evaluation responses, I made some minor adjustments to the structure of exams for my class, which I believe improved my ability to gauge student mastery of the material covered on each exam.

References

Cohen, P. (1980). Effectiveness of student-rating feedback for improving college instruction: A meta-analysis of findings. Research in Higher Education, 13(4).

Finelli, C. J. (2008). JEE Selects: A way to enhance teaching: Instructional consultants can help, especially if they elicit student feedback. Prism Magazine, 18(3), 53.