Did you learn anything?

Did You Learn Anything? By: Lang, James M., Chronicle of Higher Education, 00095982, 3/9/2007, Vol. 53, Issue 27

I found this column to be timely as I am in the process of collecting midterm evaluations. The author uses assessment techniques by Angelo and Cross to enhance midterm data collection.

According to Lang, the most important thing we can ask students about their experiences in a course is did you learn anything? Like many faculty members, the author expressed frustration with student ratings of teaching, for three reasons:

• Many ratings forms ask questions that are irrelevant to identifying effective teaching, that push particular pedagogical agendas, or that may help create bias.
• Many administrators rely too heavily on the ratings. They let the forms do the work for them, rather than letting the forms serve as part of a package of methods for evaluating a teacher, including classroom observations and analyses of written instructional materials.
• The ratings forms come at the end of the semester, when it's too late to use the results to improve the course. That means you get summative judgments rather than constructive criticism.

The author recommends two possible methods for improving midterm assessment from your students, the first of which comes from Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers, by Thomas A. Angelo and K. Patricia Cross (Jossey-
Bass, 1993). This book offers a host of methods that can be used to gather information from students. Their most well-known method is the "Minute Paper."

To use the Minute Paper," Angelo and Cross write, "an instructor stops class two or three minutes early and asks students to respond briefly to some variation on the following two questions: 'What was the most important thing you learned during this class?' and 'What important question remains unanswered?' Students then write their responses on index cards or half-sheets of scrap paper … and hand them in."

That technique, as the authors explain, provides "manageable amounts of timely and useful feedback for a minimal investment of time and energy." If every student mentions some trivial but entertaining point from your lecture as the most important thing they learned, you know you need to revisit the main idea. If a significant number of students list as an unanswered question one that you covered during a lecture, it's time to review.

Angelo and Cross describe the Minute Paper as an instrument designed to give feedback on a single course session, but it can be used to gauge student opinion on an entire unit or the course as a whole.

In any case, the student responses take just a few minutes to read and will help an instructor see whether the ideas, concepts, and skills you are teaching correspond with what the students are learning.

The second method, the author suggests to gather feedback from students is to take 10or 15 minutes at the end of a class and administer a survey with some version of these two questions: "What classroom activities or assignments have been most effective in helping you learn this semester, and why?" and "What classroom activities or assignments have been least effective in helping you learn this semester, and why?" Ask students to respond anonymously and write a paragraph for each question.

The author emphasizes the importance of explaining, both in writing and in class, that as an instructor you are interested in seeing what you can do that will help everyone learn as much as possible in the final weeks of the semester, and that the exercise will work only if they give honest responses.

Upon receipt of their responses, the author writes to pay attention to similar comments that come from multiple students. If 20 students say they are not getting much out of the group work, this area of the course should be re-evaluated.

The author also recommends that you discuss the results of your midterm survey with students, and find at least one or two ways to modify your course in order to show them that you actually listened to what they had to say.

The author closes by reiterating that it is your job as a teacher is to help your students learn. Who is more qualified than those very same students to tell you whether or not you are succeeding? The students may not have the qualifications to tell you what you should do in the classroom, but they can certainly tell you whether what you have been doing is helping them learn.

"With that information at your disposal, you are well equipped to determine whether you need to make changes in your course. Without that information, you're like an expedition leader who has a clear map to her destination, but who never looks behind to see whether anyone's following."