Gathering Feedback on Your Teaching and Students’ Learning

Using Surveys and Learning Wrappers in Your Course

Engaging in the practice of collecting formative feedback from students is an inclusive teaching practice that facilitates more open dialogue with students about their learning and—in enabling their perspectives and experiences to inform your practices in the classroom—further supports your commitment to creating a supportive learning environment. From semester to semester, each group of students brings a new dynamic diversity of prior knowledge, skills, and attitudes that affect the class climate and experience. Gathering students’ feedback—especially if done around the middle of the term—can offer powerful opportunities for reflection that may lead you to change aspects of your teaching or renew your commitment to specific approaches.

When soliciting your learners’ feedback, consider the following questions:

What do you want feedback on? Learners can give feedback on specific aspects of your course and learning environment, such as activities and assignments, or more generally about what is working well and what could be improved.
What feedback is most important and most actionable? It is important to prioritize the feedback that you think will have the greatest impact on learning and that is actually possible to act on in your current offering.
How will you share your response with your students? Offering thanks to your students for their feedback and explaining the main points you will act on shows your students that you value their feedback.

Typically, you might think of gathering mid-semester feedback as an activity that is primarily focused on your approach as the instructor. But how might you balance questions about your own pedagogical practices with inquiry around how students approach preparing and studying for your course?

In considering methods for gathering feedback on your teaching as well as students’ approaches to learning, there are a variety of different methods you might consider. Here, we will focus on two approaches for soliciting student feedback that offer the possibility of addressing questions regarding both your teaching and students’ learning strategies: (1) surveys/questionnaires and (2) learning wrappers.

Mid-term Surveys or Questionnaires

The most common methods of collecting feedback are through surveys or questionnaires distributed in the middle of the term (and sometimes again at the end of the course). This feedback offers key insights that can influence how you approach your teaching currently, as well as in future iterations of your course.

Surveys or questionnaires are often administered confidentially, where only instructors can see students’ responses, so that students can share without worrying about their classmates’ opinions. Software tools can be used to collect students’ responses about their experiences in the course digitally, or you can distribute a paper survey in class. The questions on a survey can be designed to target specific aspects of the course or the questions can be designed as open-ended prompts in order to let students share new ideas with you.

Survey/Questionnaire Tips

Think about whether you’d like the questionnaire to be anonymous or identifiable. If you don’t imagine following up with students individually on their responses, you may want to opt for an anonymous approach in order to encourage as much candor in students’ responses as possible.
Decide whether you’d like to administer your survey or questionnaire in class or outside of class. In either case, be clear about how long students should take to complete it, and who will be seeing their responses.
Reflect on what you would like to know about your students’ experiences. For example, you might ask students about challenges they may be facing in the course and outside of the course, or you might seek feedback on a specific assignment. You might also pose questions about different learning activities, opportunities for growth, and potential challenges related to certain content areas.
Consider a balance between open-ended and closed-ended questions: open-response questions for students can provide you with more general feedback, while close-ended questions might offer the opportunity to ask essential questions that can be quickly answered with “yes” or “no”, or on a scale of 1 to 5 (from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”). Phrase questions without judgment so as to invite the most candid responses possible from your students.

Survey/Questionnaire Examples

These sample questions can be collected anonymously or not, and be offered on paper, or added to an online survey in Moodle or another survey host, such as Google Forms, Google Docs, or Qualtrics. Below are templates you can use. (Note: Opening the links below will enable you to make a fresh copy that you can edit as needed.)

A 7-item survey asking students about key aspects of effective instruction, based on the seven principles described in How Learning Works (Ambrose et al., 2010).
Five examples of open-ended questions to help students provide constructive feedback about the course.
“Four square” questionnaire approach that balances two teaching-related questions with the equivalent learning-related questions.

Learning Wrappers

Some assessments that we typically classify as summative can be used for both summative and formative purposes. For example, a midterm exam or research paper is a summative assessment that can significantly impact students’ final grades, but their timing around the middle of the term also provides an opportunity for students to receive formative feedback about their learning and identify opportunities for improvement, in addition to providing you with feedback on the effectiveness of your teaching.

Consider using a mid-term “learning wrapper” (also known as a “cognitive wrapper,” “exam wrapper,” or “assignment wrapper”)—a short handout that you hand back with a graded summative assessment that asks students to reflect on the effectiveness of their study habits and your teaching strategies in order to encourage improvements in their learning for the remaining duration of your course. Learning wrappers are easily adaptable to different disciplines and courses, as well as to different kinds of graded assessments or assignments. They are also repeatable, in that they can be used for multiple assignments over a semester, as the questions they include continue to be valuable even when asked on more than one occasion.

Ultimately, a learning wrapper is a tool that helps students reflect on the adequacy of their preparation time and the appropriateness of their study strategies, characterize the nature of their errors to find any recurring patterns that could be addressed and share insights into how your teaching currently supports—and might further support—their learning. By using a learning wrapper, you can transform a summative assessment into an opportunity for formative feedback in which you help your students engage in the metacognitive process of determining how they are progressing toward defined learning goals, while also giving you the chance to adjust your teaching strategies or revisit core concepts in ways that are targeted to challenges students may be experiencing in your course.

Learning Wrapper Tips

Pair a learning wrapper with the first major summative assessment (e.g., paper, exam) in your course, and ask students to look through their returned work and answer the questions on the wrapper. Be clear about how the process of reflecting on students’ answers to these questions is meant to help support their learning process, as well as help you adjust your teaching in ways that support their study strategies.
Include learning-focused questions that address different aspects of how students approach preparing for your course, including study strategies (with a list of options provided); specific course content covered while studying, categorized by different key areas or concepts (with a list of options provided); and what they would do differently the next time they are preparing for a summative assessment in your course.
In addition to asking students questions about their study strategies, include teaching-focused prompts that address how your instructional methods are currently helping them in their preparation, as well as how your teaching approach could further support their learning in your course.
Once completed, students then return their completed wrapper to you. If students are completing similar assessments in the second half of term, then you can keep the wrapper and return them to students to review prior to the due date of the next assessment(s). This allows students to review what they previously noted on their wrapper so they can make adjustments for the next time.

Learning Wrapper Examples

When you hand back a graded midterm, paper, or other significant assignment, you can attach a brief learning wrapper handout that asks students to reflect on versions of the following questions:

Approximately how much time did you spend preparing for this exam/paper?
What percentage of your preparation was spent on the following activities? (Provide a list of specific study approaches.)
Which areas covered did you feel more prepared for? Less prepared for? (Provide a list of specific course content or concepts addressed.)
What could you do to help improve your preparation, especially in the areas you struggled with?
What could I do as your instructor to help you feel better prepared in the areas you struggled with?

Various examples and adaptations for learning wrappers used in different disciplinary contexts can be found in this resource from the Eberly Center at Carnegie Mellon University (where it originated), as well as in this resource from Teaching Naked.

Communicating with Students About the Feedback Activity

Regardless of which format you choose for your mid-term feedback activity, being intentional about how you present the feedback activity to students will help create an open, communicative environment. Here are some suggestions for introducing the purpose and steps of your feedback activity to your students:

Explain your motivation for this activity: Express your desire to grow as an educator, and share how you hope to adapt your current or future instructional practices.
Acknowledge that you are asking them to put thought and effort into an “extra” task: For example, will they get any “points” for sharing feedback with you?
Explain your expectations: Is it optional or mandatory? When do you expect it to be completed?
Explain what will happen with their feedback: Will anyone else be seeing their responses?

Being clear with students about what you’d like them to do and being transparent about why you are doing it will help them provide constructive feedback, and hopefully help you make informed decisions about any adjustments you might implement in your course to establish a more inclusive and productive learning environment.

Further Support

To request a one-on-one consultation about how you might create and implement a formative student feedback activity in your course (or to discuss any aspect related to teaching), email Alexia Ferracuti, Director of Inclusive Pedagogy (aferracuti@vassar.edu).

References

Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M. C., & Norman, M. K. (2010). How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Angelo, T. A., & Cross, K. P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A handbook for college teachers (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Bowen, J. A. (2017). Teaching naked techniques: A practical guide to designing better classes. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Chappuis, J., Stiggins, R. Chappuis, S., Arter, J. (2012). Classroom assessment for student learning: Doing it right–using it well. Assessment Training Institute.

Lovett, M.C. (2013). “Make exams worth more than grades: Using exam wrappers to promote metacognition.” Using reflection and metacognition to improve student learning. Kaplan, M., Silver, N., Lavaque-Manty, D., Meizlish, D., eds. San Francisco: Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Suskie, L. (2018). Assessing student learning: A common sense guide. John Wiley & Sons.Winkelmes, M. (2013). “Transparency in teaching: Faculty share data and improve students’ learning.” Liberal Education 99/2 (Spring 2013), 48-55.