Whatever method you use to collect feedback, your survey should be done anonymously. Students may be unwilling to share their actual thoughts on the course otherwise. Some collection methods to keep answers anonymous are below.

• Un-named written feedback during class. This works well in large courses when you are unlikely to recognize individual students handwriting. Be direct with students that this should be anonymous so they do not automatically add their name to the assignment before turning it in.
• You can make anonymous survey in Canvas. Directions for making a survey in Canvas are available here. Be sure the click the “Keep Submissions Anonymous” option when building the survey! Even when they are anonymous, you can assign credit (or extra-credit) for submitting the survey through Canvas.
• Midway Student-Experience Survey (M-SES) are anonymous, just like the end-of-course survey. More details about the M-SES are below.
• Qualtrics surveys can collect anonymous responses for you.

You will need to clearly advertise the survey(s). These should include clear explanations for why you are doing the survey. An example invitation is given below.

Feedback surveys can be completed once (often near the middle of the term) or can be an ongoing part of your course. Regular check-ins with students keep problems from getting out of hand and can help you iteratively improve the course. If your course asks students to do regular reflection or metacognitive activities, you can add in course feedback questions to some of these activities or replace some activities with feedback surveys. If you’d like to add more metacognition to your course, we have a list of metacognitive activities you could peruse.

"[Student Feedback] is not a linear process. As you complete each task, you can always return to an earlier one before moving on. For instance, after collecting and processing information from students, an instructor may decide that she simply doesn't understand her students' responses. She may then choose to collect more information before responding to her students." - William C. Rando and Lisa Firing Lenze

Below are some common feedback methods, other than a midterm survey, that you could try.

• One-Minute Paper – Give students a very limited time to record their thoughts on a question about the course. They can often submit these at the end of class, just before leaving. Since this is only one question, this is a good method for collecting feedback many times throughout the term.
• Exit Ticket – Similar to a one-minute paper, these are completed at the end of class but can be a bit longer allowing for more questions. Students answer their questions and submit their work as their “ticket” to exit. This could also be formatted in Canvas as a survey for students complete soon after a class ends (end of the day, early the following day, before the next class session begins).
• Weekly Reflection – a brief, end of week questionnaire about their experiences in the class that week. Questions and topics can change throughout the term to fit in with the course schedule (reflecting on study habits the week before an exam, for example). One example is a learning audit that has students reflect on what concepts they learned during the week, what skills they learned during the week, and what things they’d be able to explain to others after the week. It is best done multiple times throughout a term to help students track their own development through the course. (Brookfield, 2017)
• iClicker Polling – You can use iClicker to collect anonymous multiple choice answers to questions about how the course is going. This can create a starting point to open discussion and can be particularly helpful when debriefing student feedback. 

The middle of a term is a fine place to check in with students on their experience in the course. You can design your own survey for students to complete in class or in Canvas.

UO offers a default Midway Student-Experience Survey (M-SES). It is automatically available to students for all courses, but students are NOT automatically reminded to complete it through Canvas. You need to instruct students to complete the M-SES if you want to use it for your feedback. Students WILL get automatic reminders to complete end-of-term Student Experience Surveys (E-SES).

Results of the M-SES are only shared with faculty to help improve their course. Your department head, dean, tenure and promotion committee, etc will not see M-SES results. 

You can review your students' responses to the M-SES through DuckWeb. Your end-of-term feedback (E-SES) are on DuckWeb and your instructor dashboard. Details for accessing and using the instructor dashboard are here.

M-SES responses are anonymous and you are not told which students completed the survey. If you want to offer credit for completing a feedback survey, you can build an anonymous survey in Canvas.

M-SES lists teaching elements for students to evaluate the effectiveness of in your course. They can give written feedback on what’s most helpful and what needs work. They can also give general suggestions for your course. The full list of M-SES questions is available here.

Faculty can add two questions to the M-SES (and to the E-SES). Directions to add questions to the M-SESS and E-SES are given here. The next section of this page gives guidelines below for designing feedback questions.

Be brief – Feedback surveys should not take students more than a couple minutes to complete. They can be done outside of class through Canvas or UO’s SES system or in-class on paper or by giving students time to complete digital surveys.

Questions should have space for students written responses. Just Likert scaled responses (strongly agree, agree, etc.) aren’t sufficient to understand what challenges students are having. 

Encourage students to reflect on what is helping them learn. Improving their learning is the whole point. Students may want to note what they like or, more likely, don’t like but that’s different from what they learn from. (Parrish, 2016).

Choose items to focus on and ask specific questions about those. Are you trying a new teaching method this term? Ask students how it is going. Are you unsure if your assignments are supporting your learning objectives? See what students think. 

You can use the survey to analyze classroom climate. Do students feel welcomed and comfortable in your class? Do they feel that their voices and heard and appreciated? Are your classroom methods for forming groups helpful to students? You can’t really know without them telling you.

“[Student feedback] is vitally important to me because I make assumptions, I jump to conclusions, I screw up. Mid-semester evaluations help me get to know my class better, and offer a helpful corrective to my own biases. And every time, every single time, my students are insightful and kind and brave enough to call my attention to my oversights” - Laura B. McGrath

Ask students to give specific examples, if possible, to highlight concerns. This will help you best understand the students’ experiences and address challenges they are facing.

Try using a simple, regular structure – ask students what you should keep doing because it helps them learn, stop doing because it doesn’t, or start doing that you aren’t already. There are many phrases you can use to label these categories: Stop/Start/Continue, Keep/Add/Drop, Like/Dislike/Suggestion, Keep/Quit/Start (Carleton University). Example 3 is an example of these questions.

Another simple format is the “plus/delta” format. Here you ask students to reflect on what you should continue to help them learn (the plus, +) and what you should change (the delta, Δ).  

"Look for specific complaints—for example, student anxiety about the difficulty of exams. If the complaint seems justified, make a plan to address the problem. Keep in mind that students are better at spotting problems than at making detailed suggestions for improvement." - Barbara Gross Davis

Focus on the underlying issues students are having, rather than their solutions necessarily. Because they are not experts in teaching pedagogy they can struggle to suggest clear, meaningful changes.

Take your own feedback survey before analyzing student answers. Don't try to "guess" what the students' experiences are will be. Be honest with how effective you think your course is - no course is perfect. This can serve as a good baseline to compare your opinions against the thoughts of the students taking your course and can highlight disconnects between instructor and students. (Davis, 2009)

Discard extreme comments, both good and bad. You’ll like see a range of opinions that will generally cancel out. Focus on finding the average experience to determine what needs to be done (Zakrajsek, 2019).

Look for themes in their responses. Try making a list of comments, add a new thought when it appears and add tally marks when thoughts re-appear. 

Focus on feedback that is helpful – both actionable and something you can control. If you can’t change something about a course that many students are unhappy with, don’t fret on it (but be sure to discuss it in the debrief).

Review feedback with a colleague. You can review the results together and discuss what themes you see. Or they could summarize results for you, which may help you get a clearer view of the feedback without unintentionally getting focused on a negative comment. In either case, they also can function as a good partner to brainstorm solutions to any challenges your students outline. TEP is also happy to go through your feedback with you – just reach out to us!

For large enrollment courses you can randomly select a subset of responses to review rather than try to analyze all of them. If you have GEs, you could also assign you and your GEs a subset of responses, have everyone summarize their group of responses, and then you just analyze the summaries you and your GEs generated.

Just like giving students for assignments, debriefing student feedback is most impactful when done in a timely manner. As part of your prep for feedback surveys, make a plan to discuss their feedback quickly. Consider communicating your clarifications/changes at least two ways (in an email to the class and at the beginning of a class session, for example). 

Thank students for providing their feedback. This couples nicely with reiterating that you are using their feedback to improve not just their experience but your own teaching abilities.

"The key thing is to make sure that students feel that their comments have been heard and understood. If you show you are responsive and can act on even a few of their ideas, that will strengthen your relationship with them and encourage them to continue to provide feedback." - Centre for Teaching Excellence at the University of Waterloo.

Summarize themes you see in their feedback and don’t shy away from negative feedback. You can give general themes, or even highlight specific comments that speak to a collection of items. It can even be beneficial to highlight when feedback contradicts – some students find something beneficial and others find it useless. This “can be a valuable reminder to your students that they are one person in a larger class of students who may well have different preferences” (Carleton University).

Acknowledge changes you’ll make and explain why you are making them.

You won't always be able to make changes students suggest - you may be limited by university or department policy, implementing a student idea might require drastic changes to the course, or a change just might not be good teaching pedagogy. But if you won’t do something that students suggest, explain why. The University of Waterloo suggests breaking themes into groups: “Tell the students what suggestions you’ll act on this term, those that must wait until next term, and those that you won’t or can’t act on and why".

Bring students into the debrief conversation:

• After pointing out challenges and offering solutions, are there other solutions students can see? You can even let students vote on changes to implement. (Florida State University)
• You don’t have to ask for feedback just once in a term. Invite students to continue a dialogue with you about improving the course.
• Ask students to hold you accountable to enacting the changes you’ve outlined. (Harvard University)
• Follow up with students later in the term - have the changes been helpful? (Guarnera, 2016)