Gathering Feedback on your Teaching
As a GA/TA it can be helpful to gather feedback on your teaching from students, the course instructor, and through self-reflection to identify areas of strength, provide focus for areas of improvement, and enhance teaching confidence. This chapter will discuss approaches to gathering feedback, including possible questions to ask.
Feedback From Students
If you have taught, whether this be through a lab, tutorial, or guest lecture, it is worthwhile to gather students’ feedback on your teaching. Not only does collecting feedback give students’ voice, but it also allows you to make adjustments throughout the term and enhance your teaching practices. This feedback can also be used for professional documents such as a teaching dossier.
Depending on your responsibilities as a GA/TA, it may be helpful to gather students’ feedback throughout the course so that you have time to make changes. When collecting student feedback, it’s important to let students know at the start of the semester that you will be asking for their feedback. Feedback should be collected anonymously to ensure students do not feel that providing feedback will influence their grade in the course. Once the feedback is collected, review it to find common trends. Lastly, share the feedback with the students, discussing what you can change, what you can’t change this semester, and what aspects are out of your control (e.g., room location, class time).
Methods of Soliciting Feedback
Stop-Start-Continue
Ask students to respond to the following questions on a piece of paper or complete an anonymous online survey:
- What would you like me to stop doing?
- What would you like me to start doing?
- What would you like me to continue doing?
Next, organize the feedback into common themes and discuss responses in the next class/lab/tutorial. While all feedback is important, keep in mind that students will often have different perceptions. For example, if half the class thinks you should start providing more helpful feedback, it may be time to look into ways to provide constructive feedback to students so that they can learn how to improve on their work.
One-Minute Paper
To get anonymous feedback, try using the one-minute paper method. Students will respond to questions in one minute, either online or using paper:
- What is the most important (or relevant) thing you learned in this class/lab/tutorial?
- What important question(s) remains unanswered?
- Is there anything you did not understand?
While questions can be added/adapted, the goal of the one-minute paper is to help you gauge whether the students understood the main idea(s) or whether the topic needs to be explained more clearly next time. This process is a good reflection tool for both you and the students after each class. The questions can also vary to suit the concepts you taught that day. For example, “What was one thing you learned today and how can you apply it in your future career?”.
Google Forms or Qualtrics Surveys
Another great way to collect feedback is to have students complete an anonymous online survey using tools such as Google Forms or Qualtrics (survey platform). Here you can create specific questions that target areas of your teaching you are curious about. It can also be helpful to include space for a testimonial section where students can write down their overall impressions of you as a GA/TA, which is needed in a teaching dossier. If you are looking to collect testimonials, it is important to ask students to be specific and tell them that you are looking for concrete examples from their experience in your course. It is often beneficial to collect feedback throughout the semester so that it can be implemented in the classroom, where possible can be done throughout the semester.
The GATA Network has developed an optional feedback form template which was designed to help GA/TAs collect feedback from students in the course they are assisting with. You can find more information on collecting mid-term student feedback on the CTL website.
Feedback from the Course Instructor
As a GA/TA it can also be helpful to gather feedback from the perspective of the course instructor. Depending on your responsibilities, feedback can be gathered following a teaching session where the instructor is present (e.g., guest lecture, lab, tutorial) or at the end of the term. This feedback can help you to develop your teaching skills further and give you an idea on how to improve. This is just one more person who can provide valuable feedback to you on your teaching methods and style to help you flourish!
Self-Reflection
Engaging in self-reflection is an important piece of intentional teaching. Self-reflection provides an opportunity to pause and think about what has been going well and what could use improvement. The following prompts can help guide your reflection:
- How was class/lab/tutorial today? Did everything go as planned? If not, what got in the way? Were students engaged? Why or why not?
- What went well? What specific topics and/or activities went well and why?
- What could be improved? Are there any topics that students seem to not understand? Did any activities not go as planned? Why?