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► Student Input and Feedback Surveys
Gathering Early and Ongoing Student Input
When utilized by instructors in the context of a course, student feedback surveys include but are not limited to pre-course and mid-quarter surveys. The practice of using early and ongoing surveys can help instructors to understand student needs, contexts, and prior knowledge; gather information about students’ experiences in the course; and adapt instruction accordingly.
Different from the formalized Student Experience of Teaching Surveys (SETS) that are administered anonymously at the end of a course, student feedback surveys allow instructional teams to act on information as the course is still in progress.
What You Can Learn from Surveying Your Students
- Students come to a course with their own unique interests, strengths, needs, and contexts. Surveying students allows instructors to better understand their students in order to deliver on learning outcomes and create a welcoming course environment.
- By providing instructors with student feedback prior to or early on in course delivery, surveys can help instructors to start from the strengths, knowledge, and experiences students bring to the classroom, and anticipate or navigate barriers to student learning as they arise.
- Surveys can build trust between instructors and students, which can benefit student learning and sense of belonging (Pacansky-Brock 2020).
- Surveys are an essential part of successful online instruction, since visual indicators of student needs that can be picked up in the classroom are not accessible in an online environment.
- Surveys are a tool to check in with students early and often, so that instructors can be flexible with their unique situations and follow up on their feedback by implementing their most useful suggestions.
TLC Guide
Student Input and Feedback Surveys provides sample language for pre- and mid-course surveys, as well as instructions for using Google Forms and Canvas to administer student feedback surveys.
Additional Resources
For more information on Canvas surveys, visit the Canvas Guide.