Reflective practice

Gathering student feedback through a survey is a great way to adopt a reflective practice in your teaching. Through a survey, you can take the temperature of your course, identify what is and isn’t working, and encourage students to reflect on their own learning.

Sample survey questions

What are three important things you have learned so far in this class?
What don't you understand well enough yet?
How much of the reading that has been assigned so far have you completed?
What are the strongest features of this course and of my teaching? In other words, what contributes most to your learning?
What are the weakest features of this course and of my teaching? In other words, what is making your learning more difficult?
What steps could you take to improve your own learning in this course?

Surveys in Canvas

You can easily create surveys in Canvas. Using the quiz tool, just use the dropdown menu to switch from quiz to survey.

Surveys in Canvas can be anonymous and even be worth completion points (a great way to incentivize participation from your students). One idea is to have a graded survey halfway through the semester that solicits feedback from your students. This gives you time to potentially make changes in response to student comments.

Following up a survey

If you collect feedback from students, a great way to connect with your students is to respond to the feedback constructively. Here is an example of student comments and instructor responses from Michael Edwards' graduate Webinars course: INTE5670 Mid-course Survey Results