Student Early-Term Feedback for Course-Enhancement Purposes
The early-term (weeks 4-6) student feedback process is formative in nature (for improvement purposes) and designed to give faculty a sense of how students are experiencing the learning environment. The process opens up dialogue about the learning process between students and faculty and affirms student responsibility in this process.
Considerations for conducting the student feedback process (pdf)
Sample feedback form (modifiable), VITAL (.docx, open in FireFox)
Sample open-ended instructional feedback questions (pdf)
Dr. Alexander Diaz-Lopez, Mathematics & Statistics, discusses his use of formative student feedback to achieve three goals: (1) student background, (2) early term course adjustments, (3) student metacognition regarding their study habits. (with permission)
Creating/distributing the feedback form and collecting the feedback online
Given the various course modalities, we suggest to use to create the formative feedback form:
- Copy and paste the questions from VITAL form into 鈥淨uestions鈥� in Forms
- Set 鈥淪ettings鈥� (who can fill out this form) to 鈥渁nyone with link鈥� to keep responses anonymous
- Under "Settings" (options for responses) select "accept responses" to initiate the form and collect responses
- Under 鈥淪ettings鈥� select 鈥渟tart date and time and end date and time鈥� so that the feedback is completed in a timely fashion (suggest 24 hours) to share the themes from students鈥� responses with the class at the next class meeting (e.g., invite feedback on Tues, share feedback on Thu)
- Under 鈥淪ettings鈥� create thank you message
- Preview and/or test the form
- Copy the link into an email message to send to your class list and/or to distribute via Announcements in Blackboard.
- To view responses, select "Responses" and download them in excel
Video instructions on
If you are familiar with another survey tool that keeps the students鈥� responses anonymous, please feel free to use.