The Teaching Center assists faculty with gathering, interpreting, and making improvements to teaching based on several types of student feedback: midterm course surveys, small group instructional diagnoses, and student opinion of teaching surveys.

Conducting Midterm Course Surveys

The Office of Measurement and Evaluation of Teaching offers opt-in automated midterm course surveys.  Midterm course survey data provides instructors with timely feedback that can uncover barriers to student learning and can assist instructors in knowing which teaching methods are working and whether adjustments should be made (Diamond, 2004). Discussing the results with students provides an opportunity for open dialogue between instructor and student, emphasizing a shared ownership of teaching and learning. (Payette & Brown, 2018) “The timely correction of students’ concerns through the implementation of midcourse corrections affords both the instructor and students the opportunity to change the direction of the teaching and learning of the course for the improvement of both constituents.” (Harris, 2013)

Midterm course survey research has shown that conducting midterm evaluations and acting on the results has a positive impact on end of term feedback. Conducting midterm evaluations can lead to higher ratings on end-of-year surveys (Cohen, 1980), improved student perception of the value of the process (Sviniki, 2001), and allows students to become more familiar and adept at completing meaningful evaluations (Lewis, 2001).

For examples of questions that you can add to student midterm course surveys, see the OMET question library or the University of Connecticut’s examples of midterm surveys for different types of courses.

Small Group Instructional Diagnosis (SGID)

SGID is an interactive, focus group-like formative assessment technique used to gather more detailed, qualitative student feedback than could be collected via student survey. If you request an SGID, a teaching consultant would visit your class for about 30 minutes and use an established protocol that involves your students working in small groups to respond to questions about what assists with their learning, what impedes their learning, and what you as the instructor could do to improve their learning in the course. Following the SGID, the teaching consultant would produce a short report summarizing results and schedule a consultation with you to make recommendations based on findings. If you would like to schedule an SGID, please contact the Teaching Center at teaching@pitt.edu no later than two weeks prior to when you would like someone to visit your class.

Student Opinion of Teaching Surveys

Most schools use the OMET Student Opinion of Teaching Survey process as one means of gathering student feedback. The resources below will help you learn more about the process, survey questions, customizing your survey, where to find survey links, and increasing response rates. Schools and departments establish their own policies pertaining to who is surveyed, survey questions, and who receives access to results. The University of Kansas’ Center for Teaching Excellence created a comprehensive overview of research on the use of student opinion of teaching surveys to assess teaching [Word doc]. You can also request individualized assistance with developing practices for the use of teaching survey data to inform improvements to teaching.