While many staff already collect student feedback at the end of semester using questionnaires and student group interviews, it is usually collected too late to allow staff to respond by implementing changes to improve the teaching of the students offering the feedback.

Staff who would like to be able to monitor their teaching during the semester in order to act immediately to improve their teaching might find collection of student feedback during the semester a useful strategy. As with all aspects of feedback and evaluation of teaching, it is useful to draw upon a range of different yet complementary sources of data.

While formal feedback strategies can be adapted to collect feedback during the semester, there are a range of strategies suitable for gathering informal feedback from students. Perhaps the most obvious way is to ask the students questions directly. If classes are small and interactive and there is mutual trust and respect on the part of the students and teachers, then posing questions directly to a class may be feasible. However, there is no scope for anonymity of student responses and some students may feel uncomfortable voicing less popular opinions in such a public manner. There are various strategies which have been developed to address these issues yet still permit quick and easy collection of feedback from students. Information on some of these is included in this section.

• Three open questions
• Critical learning statements

This strategy can be adapted to different modalities and purposes. There is nothing magical about the number three however this number of questions usually provides a manageable amount of feedback without taxing student or staff resources unnecessarily. This uses students' individual written responses to open questions asked at the end of the class. The questions might be written on the board or an overhead transparency or they may be provided as an actual questionnaire. The questions you choose to ask will be determined by what you want to gather feedback on. However they are typically along the lines of the following-:

"What was the most useful thing you learned today?"
"What was the best thing about today's class?"
"How could I change my teaching to help students to learn more from this class?"

In some cases it might be appropriate to ask very specific questions such as;

"Which of the set pre-readings was most helpful in preparing for today's class?"
"How did today's computer learning task help you understand the concept of...?"

In larger classes the time required to read written responses from every student can be a barrier to using this technique. In such cases sampling procedures can be helpful. There are many ways to select a random sample of students. One simple technique is ;

"Please pass these questionnaires along the row, could every fifth person take one and fill out the questionnaire. In a few minutes I'll ask you to pass your questionnaire back along the row to the end so I can collect them. While those people are filling out the questionnaire would the rest of you...."

Other techniques used include selection based on sub-groups in the class, for example "All those in a Tuesday tutorial group....". If sampling is used then the usual caveats apply in that there is only a probability that the results of your sample are representative of the whole population.

Group responses: An alternative to sampling in larger classes is to divide the class into groups of 5-10 students and collect the collated responses to the questions from each group of students after the individual students have contributed to a group discussion.

"I want you each to write down your answers to these three questions. In a few minutes I want you to discuss your answers in your groups. Once everybody has had their say I'd like one person in each group to write down their group's response to each question."

This technique is useful as it ensures discussion and some degree of consensus amongst the students before they respond. At the same time it streamlines the amount of feedback that the teacher has to read. In some settings, this technique can be equally well adapted to verbal presentation of group responses.

This is a useful technique which gathers feedback on student learning as a way of investigating the effectiveness of teaching. In this strategy students are asked to write down the three critical points they have most clearly learned from the class and the three points they are still most unclear about. This strategy is also known as three clear and three muddy points.

A consideration of the responses and identification of any recurring themes is an effective way of identifying where teaching has worked well in terms of student learning and where it could be improved. It also provides feedback which can be acted upon quickly as the teacher can review any particularly difficult points in the following session.

A variant of this strategy involves asking students to write down three questions they still have on the topic of the class. This can provide pointers to any remaining areas of confusion for students and also provide staff with an indication of what students are interested in learning more about. This can of course also be adapted for group responses rather than individual responses.

In units of study with small enrolments it is also possible to obtain student feedback using structured group interviews. In this process the staff member meets with an ITL staff member to devise a suitable interview schedule. On the appointed day, the ITL staff member visits the class and the staff member leaves. The class is then interviewed and the responses to the preset questions as well as an indication of the extent of support for different opinions and views within the group are documented by the interviewer. Comments and suggestions from the students can be followed-up during the interview and this additional information is included in the report. The interview usually takes about 45 minutes. A report is written and sent to the staff member.

This process is particularly suitable for small classes of less than 20 students. However, the process can be easily adapted for use with larger groups. The structured group interview is particularly useful when information about the reasons for the students' opinions or perceptions is required. The additional information typically volunteered by students can prove a valuable source of data for new staff, new units of study or when seeking feedback on innovations in existing teaching practices.

Contact the ITL about developing a Student Group Interview

Focus Groups are a variant of the Structured Group Interview method adopted for surveying larger classes. Students are asked to nominate / self select a group of approximately 15 students to participate in a structured group interview. The process is then the same as that of the structured group interview however it is conducted with this subgroup of the complete class. On the day of the interview the ITL staff member visits the class, the interview group of students remain and the rest of the class leaves. The interview is then completed. A report is written and forwarded to the staff member. It is recommended that the feedback from the report be validated with the student group as a whole in a subsequent class to ensure that the comments are representative.

This process is an effective way of obtaining qualitative data from large student groups when particularly detailed information is required as in a formal unit of study review or evaluation.

Lizzio et al. (2002) have developed focus group protocols for investigating students’ experiences of workload and assessment at the unit of study level. These appear in the appendices of the following paper:

Lizzio, A., Wilson, K., & Simons, R. (2002) University students’ perceptions of the learning environment and academic outcomes: Implications for theory and practice. Studies in Higher Education, 27, 27-51.

Contact the ITL about developing a Focus Group Interview

If your Unit of Study includes online materials and activities, you might consider gathering student feedback on their learning experience via online means. You could invite comments on particular topics and tasks via

• private e-mail (in WebCT: 'Mail'),
• a public discussion list (in WebCT, 'Discussion'),
• a public chat session. (in WebCT: 'Chat').

Using one-to-one e-mail (eg. WebCT Mail) guarantees a certain privacy for each student, in that the exchange will be between you and that student only. You could invite your students to e-mail you privately at particular points in the Unit with their questions, and some brief notes or comments about what they find useful or aren't sure about. Your availability and the feedback you provide via this private channel will be appreciated by many of your students.

In a discussion list all messages and posts to the list are likely to be read by everyone enrolled in your Unit (unless you set it up otherwise). In WebCT, the 'Discussion' tool is structured around discussion forums called 'Topics'. You could create an 'Evaluation' Topic in the WebCT Discussion/Topic area. Here students could be encouraged to post feedback on specific aspects of the teaching-learning process. They might discuss, for example, what they understood were the key points in a particular talk, topic or reading. This kind of discussion will enable you to determine whether the teaching-learning processes are effective in supporting and developing the students' understanding.

The composition of the group which accesses the 'Evaluation' Topic discussion will influence the nature of what is posted. Therefore you will need to indicate to your students whether the 'Evaluation' Topic area is public and accessible by all, including yourself and other teaching staff. You might consider setting up 'private' group-based discussions in the WebCT Discussion/Topic area. After a period of online discussion, one student representative from each group could e-mail you a summary of the group's discussion. Or group representatives could post their summaries to a public Discussion/Topic area for you and others to discuss.

Online chat rooms (eg. WebCT Chat) offer a third online feedback option. Because chat sessions are synchronous and must run at a set time, they are not necessarily convenient for all students. However, you may decide to set up regular or occasional chat sessions, to handle student queries and issues. (This is very much like opening your office door at set times to your students). You could pose open-ended questions to the students in the chat room about specific or general aspects of the learning experience in that Unit of Study.