Mid-Semester Student Feedback Sessions

(Small Group Instructional Diagnosis)

The Center for Effective Teaching offers (especially new) faculty a service known as a Small Group Instructional Diagnosis (SGID). The SGID is essentially a mid-semester student course evaluation, to get their feedback during the semester, instead of only at the end of the semester. This process uses guided discussions to generate useful feedback for the instructor, filtering out extreme or unhelpful comments and getting useful information. The information that is obtained is reported back to the faculty member, who can use it to make modifications or adjustments to the class.

The SGID process among its attributes:

• The process gets students to focus on what about the course is helpful or unhelpful to their learning, including structure, texts, and online resources - as well as the things that the instructor is doing.
• Normal student evalautions are useful only to improve future classes - this process helps improve the class before the end of the semester. By addressing (valid) student concerns at mid-semester, you can improve the scores on end-of-semester evaluations.
• It gives students a voice about the course - they are often more candid with an outside observer than with the instructor.
• This is completely confidential - this feedback goes ONLY to you for your improvement.

If you are thinking about requesting an SGID, you'll need to call and schedule it, along with a pre and post-conference. On the scheduled day, the facilitator will come into your class and take the last half of one class-time to do the following:

(in brief:)

1. You'll leave - Go get a coffee...
2. The facilitator will get the students into small groups, and ask the groups to discuss:
1. "What are you supposed to be able to do after having successfully completed this course?"
2. "What are the strengths of this course that help you learn?"
3. "What changes would improve your learning?"
3. The small groups will come up with consensus answers to these questions, and share them with the class.
4. The facilitator will clarify and distill the answers with the class into responses that most can agree on.
5. The facilitator will report the results back to you - confidentially.

The report from the facilitator goes only to you. This process is entirely for your improvement, and will not be shared with anyone else.

If you would like to schedule an SGID, please contact Louis Keiner (x2226) or Jennifer Shinaberger (x2737) at the CETL, and we'll schedule an initial meeting to discuss the procedure.