ENHANCING TEACHING AND LEARNING THROUGH MID-SEMESTER STUDENT FEEDBACK

Student evaluations were originally seen as a feedback mechanism by which students could inform teachers about their experiences in a module and based on which faculty members would make appropriate changes to the pedagogy and/or content. Over the years, this function has been largely superseded and student evaluations are used for summative purposes by administration for decisions regarding promotion and tenure or teaching awards and by students to select courses they like to do. The most widely used method for evaluating teaching is the end-of-semester student feedback questionnaire. While end-of-semester student feedback is collected for each module/teacher by a majority of universities, there is little evidence that instructors change their pedagogy based on these evaluations. But, there is ample evidence that the usage of mid-semester feedback in modules can lead to meaningful improvements in instruction, student learning outcomes and attitudes, and even lead to higher end-of-semester student ratings (Cohen, 1980; Marsh & Roche, 1993; Aleamoni, 1999; Hayward, 2002). Over the last few semesters, the Centre for Development of Teaching and Learning (CDTL) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) has organised workshops on designing and administering midsemester student feedback as a part of its continuing professional development programme for faculty members. This paper evaluates the benefits of these sessions using narratives from about two dozen faculty members on how they deployed the mid-semester feedback and how it brought about improvements in the teaching and learning process. The results of this study indicate that soliciting mid-semester student feedback encourages a more responsible attitude on the part of both teachers and students because of the opportunity to reflect upon the module at a critical juncture in the semester. The paper will also discuss issues that must be dealt with when scaling up the midsemester student feedback practice to a University-wide scale.