The Power of Student Feedback

Ellen Quish

Adult Learning Center

May 20, 2010

Overview

• Beliefs

• Defining feedback

• Critical incidents

• Your experiences with feedback

• Ways to solicit feedback

• Responding to student feedback

• Final thoughts

Beliefs

• Teaching is learning: learning the students and their needs.

• Students who are informed about their learning make better choices.

• Teaching should be centered around the student.

• Students are whole people; their cognitive and affective needs should be of equal importance to teachers.

Feedback

Thinking about feedback:• What is feedback? • When and why do you solicit feedback?

Types of feedback: • Ongoing• Structured

Critical Incidents

• How would you respond in such a situation?

• What do you think is going on with each student?

• How could soliciting student feedback have helped avoid these incidents?

Outcomes to Critical Incidents

• What would you have learned about each of the students from these incidents?

• How would you have responded to the feedback in these situations?

Reflecting on your Experiences with Feedback

• Think about a critical incident from your own teaching experience, in which you either solicited student feedback, or you should have solicited student feedback.

Learning the Learners: Ways to Solicit Feedback

• Students respond individually or in small groups to questions in writing.

• Students respond verbally in individual conferences, participate in a fishbowl, small group or whole class discussion.

Describe how your ______ has improved.

What activities in this class are most helpful?

If you could change one thing about this class, what would it be?

Responding to Student Feedback

• Create a “broadsheet” or written handout that captures responses.

• Share responses with class as a springboard for discussion.

• Facilitate a problem-solving session.

Final Thoughts

• Soliciting student feedback allows teachers to communicate effectively with students and be aware of their cognitive and affective needs. Developing such an awareness can help guide teaching as well as learning.

• Regular student feedback sessions can offer teachers information about students, can provide an assessment of what in fact students are learning, and can prevent teachers from making assumptions about students.