The midway Student Experience Survey (M-SES) is centrally administered to all courses with at least five registered students. No M-SES reports are administered during summer terms. 

Feedback is only provided to the instructor. Therefore, the survey is only for the improvement of teaching and not evaluative purposes. Unless you choose to share it with others, no one else can see student feedback in your M-SES. 

The M-SES is NOT advertised to students through Canvas, so you will need to remind students to complete it.

TEP recommends that every instructor collect and reflect on midway feedback. The M-SES will run automatically for courses, or you could use your own method if you want more flexibility in questions asked of students. See our page on collecting and using student feedback for more methods to collect feedback and designing feedback questions.

The End-of-term Student Experience Survey (E-SES) is centrally administered to all courses with at least five registered students. Results are provided to the instructor and evaluators after grades are submitted.

Similar to the M-SES, the E-SES is intended to provide feedback on specific teaching practices and how they impact student perceptions of their learning. Responses to pilot surveys conducted in 2018-19 suggest students more frequently provide specific comments about teaching practices and rarely make personal comments about instructors (down from 21% to 1.5% of comments) compared to old student evaluations of teaching.

Individual instructors might want to contextualize E-SES results by addressing them in personal statements and in the new Instructor Reflection survey. The Instructor Reflection is available from the beginning of week 10 until the first Friday of the subsequent term. The instructor reflection also allows for reflection on how instructors are implementing inclusive, engaged, and research-led teaching practices.

Both the M-SES and E-SES ask students about ten specific teaching elements, listed below, drawn from research on the teaching practices that are significant to student learning. 

• The inclusiveness of this course
• Support from the instructor
• Feedback from the instructor
• The clarity of assignment instructions and grading
• The use of active learning practices
• Instructor communication in this course
• The organization of this course
• The relevance of the course content
• The assignments or projects in this course
• The accessibility of this course

The students are asked six questions about their experience in the course

1. Students are asked if each element is beneficial to their learning, neutral, or needs improvement to help their learning.
2. Students are asked to choose the one element that is most helpful to their learning and to describe what about that element helped their learning.
3. Students are asked to choose the one element that could most use some improvement to help them learn and to describe what specific change would help their learning.
4. Students are asked to estimate how many hours per week they spend on the course outside of class
5. Students are asked how many times they interacted with the instructor outside of class
6. The sixth question is open-ended for students to share their thoughts. It differs slightly between the M-SES and E-SES.
   • For the midway student experience survey, students are given the opportunity to say to their instructor what they can do to best support their learning for the remainder of the course.
   • For the end-of-term student experience survey, students are given the opportunity share anything else about their learning experience in the course.

If you’d like, you can review the exact text of the E-SES questions.

These deadlines are for quarters during the academic year. For the schedules for summer classes and semester-courses in the Law school, see the Office of the Provost’s page on the SES.

For the midway-student experience survey…

• Week 2, Wednesday: Faculty can begin adding questions to the M-SES
• Week 4, Monday at 8am: M-SES opens to students, faculty can no longer add questions
• Week 4, Friday at 6pm: M-SES closes for students
• Week 5, Monday at Noon: M-SES responses are available to faculty

For the end-of-term student experience survey…

• Week 7, Wednesday: Faculty can begin adding questions to the E-SES
• Week 9, Wednesday at 8am: E-SES opens to students, faculty can no longer add questions
• Week 10, Monday: Instructor Reflections open to faculty
• Finals Week, Friday at 6pm: E-SES closes for students
• Day after grades are due, Noon: E-SES responses are available to faculty
• 1 month after responses are available: Deadline for faculty to flag student responses for redaction
• Friday of Week 1 of following term: Instructor reflections on previous term close