Collect Feedback from Students - Why, When, and How

Student feedback on your course is not the same as institutional course evaluations. You can customize the content of the feedback form and invite students to help construct an effective learning experience.

Why to Collect Feedback

Check the pulse of your class, instead of just getting the results of an autopsy weeks after the course is done. Course feedback during the term is your formative feedback (instead of summative feedback). Moreover, giving students a voice in your class is crucial to maintaining a student-centered class. It also acts as a means of instructor presence in an online class. Think of how much it says of an instructor that they are inviting feedback. Simply providing opportunities for feedback tells students you care about their voice and their educational experience. It can be one step toward improved communication and class atmosphere. And, if you are concerned about your official course evaluations, allowing students to give you feedback might even act as a release valve for some of their frustrations before the end of the term.

When to Collect Feedback

Offer opportunities for feedback at the right moments to get the most useful responses. Everyone knows the first week of a semester can be hectic. If you collect feedback too early in the term, you might be hearing student frustrations that are not going to help you improve your course. Likewise, you should consider collecting feedback multiple times during your course. This lets students know you are working on their suggestions and gives you a chance to see if your course corrections have addressed their concerns. Collecting feedback 2 or 3 times during a term may be ideal. If you plan to collect feedback too often, students may find it is monotonous. Collecting feedback too often might make students think you either (1) are collecting feedback without integrating it or (2) just don't know what to do in your own class. Here are a few possible schedules for collecting feedback. Keep in mind all advice below is general and you should find the schedule that works best around the workload in your course.

Schedule 1: Valleys

There are times in the term when the hustle-bustle might settle down a bit. These "valleys" can be great moments to ask students to reflect on their course.

Consider the third or fourth week of the term as a place to collect your first feedback. This is far enough past the start of the term for students to have settled in to the course routine and to have gone through a few of your lessons.

Consider sometime about two weeks before the end of the term as another chance to collect feedback. This timing spaces out the two feedback items by just over a month, which should be enough time for you to make any necessary adjustments and for students to notice the changes.

Schedule 2: Peaks

Mid-term and finals are "peaks" of student activity. These seem like natural milestones in the life of a term. Just keep in mind that students are also very taxed in these times and may not take time to provide feedback.

Also keep in mind that if you are assessing students at these times, such as mid-term and/or final exams, that students cannot possibly confuse the feedback with a graded assessment.

How to Collect Feedback

While Blackboard does have a survey tool, we recommend Office 365 Form for building a "feedback form." 

You can find an example of this application in the Syllabus Section -> Student Information Survey of your online or hybrid course.

Here are some of the key features:

• You can build open-ended or closed-ended questions.
• You can control access to the feedback form.
• Responses can be gathered anonymously
• You can view results in clear graphs

Explain, Collect, Analyze, Debrief

To make the feedback process valuable to all, it is not enough to just collect feedback. Use a process like the one below to make the most of feedback.

1. Let students know about the upcoming feedback item. Include a short description on the feedback survey explaining the purpose of the survey and what you will use the feedback for.
2. Once you have collected the feedback, go over it and find trends and identify areas you can address. This is super easy with 365 Forms, as a visual analysis is available.
3. Let students know (perhaps use the Announcements tool in Blackboard) that you have analyzed the feedback, you appreciate their collaboration on making your course better, and that you are going to keep their suggestions in mind/and, when possible, make changes they will see as the course progresses.

Suggested Settings

Here are suggestions for some of the settings when you add your survey to Blackboard:

1. Use availability settings to set an open date (Display After) at the start of the week during which you want to collect feedback.
2. Set a close date (Display Until) for about one week after you hope to collect feedback. There may be a few students who put it off or forget it. This will extend the window. However, do not leave it open all term. Feedback is often meant to be time-sensitive.
3. Set a Due Date for the end of the week during which you want to collect feedback. This will add an item to students' calendars.

Speak with an Online Learning instructional designer for more details on how to link to your survey form in Bb.

What Feedback to Collect

You may want to ask students how well they are understanding assignments, whether the workload in the class is appropriate, which learning materials they find useful, what the course could use more of -- or less of. Honestly, any question about the course that can gauge student satisfaction and that revolves around an element you are in control of can be used.

• Use close-ended questions to poll about particular issues. You can discover trends by analyzing answers in Blackboard.
• Use open-ended questions to invite input on topics you may not have considered.

Caveats

Never say never...? But take the following guidance to heart:

• Avoid attaching a grade to feedback. However, offering an incentive for feedback can help you gather more responses. Luckily, Blackboard can let you see who has submitted feedback without letting you connect the respondents to their individual responses. This allows you to award extra credit for survey responses.
• Avoid combining feedback with an assessment (test, or other assessment). See above. Adding feedback questions to an exam connects the two and signals to students that you will know what they say about your class. Students may be anxious about this and will likely not be as honest as you hope in their feedback.
• Never respond negatively to feedback. It will only sour students on the experience and make you look defensive, immature, and unprofessional.

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