While evaluations at the end of the semester have their purpose, they don’t help to address any of the issues that might have been going on in the classroom or let you know what students are learning (or not learning!) until it’s too late. But what if you got feedback earlier when there is time to adjust or adapt for a particular group?

Most mid semester evaluations that I have seen or heard of are quite simple and always anonymous. Mid semester evals also tend to focus more specifically on teaching and learning and many ask students what they can do as well as what the instructor can do to increase their learning in a particular class. Mid semester evals can be done on paper, online or by a person other than the instructor.

One simple method that Horace, Assistant Professor of English, who blogs at To Delight and To Instruct uses is the stop/start/continue rubric. He has students make two columns on a page (one for things the professor can control, and one for things students can control, individually and collectively). Then he has students label three rows: Things they’d like to see stop happening, things they’d like to see start happening, things they’d like to see continue. Other simple methods like these from a variety of disciplines can be found here and tips on questions, how to give and importantly how to respond to evals can be found here.

If you prefer online methods, you can use SurveyMonkey or there is a feature in Blackboard that allows you to survey your students anonymously but still know who did the assignment. This can be useful if you want to give points for completing the assignment. Here is a wiki with instructions for doing this in Blackboard.

Some schools like Stanford and UMass Amherst have a person other than the instructor go into the classroom and conduct an interview. This seems valuable but for the people who want something a little more low key, some of the other methods might be interesting to try. While I say low key, it is important to think out the questions and response.

There is evidence that faculty who use mid-term teaching evaluations can raise their end-of-term evaluations (Post # 313 of Tomorrow’s Professor blog by Rick Reis) and that students who are asked for input feel more committed to the course, however, like anything there are some precautions.

I am curious to know who will be doing this (or some variation of it) and what is that variation?