1. Learning from Students: Aligning
Our Teaching and Their Learning
Catherine Ross, Wake
Forest University
Gabriele Bauer,
University of Delaware

2. Purpose
 Provide context for formative student
feedback.
 Define feedback, assessment, formative
and summative.
 Examine various data collection methods.
 Develop student feedback questions for
your courses.

3. Before we start, what do we mean?
 Feedback
 Assessment
 Formative and summative
 CATs

4. Current practice?
 Do you collect formative
feedback from your students
 How do / would your students
respond?
 How has the feedback been
helpful?

5. Why collect formative student feedback?
 Collect student perceptions on their learning
experience.
-- get a sense of the impact of instructional practices
on student learning.
-- make adjustments during the course.
-- consider post-course improvement.
 Help students become self-aware of their learning
and involved.
 Confirm, explain, correct our self-assessment of
instruction – help us better understand the critical
link between learning and teaching.

6. Classroom Assessment Techniques
(CATs)
Approach designed to help instructors find out
what students are learning in class and how well
they are learning it: information about change in
student learning.
Both teaching tool and assessment device
(formative).
Reference. Cross, P., & Angelo, T. (1993). Classroom assessment
techniques.

7. Classroom Assessment Techniques
(CATs)
 Learner-centered
 Instructor-directed
 Mutually beneficial
 Instructional context-specific
 Ongoing, short-term oriented
 Non-graded (quick read, don’t agonize)
 Conducted in class

8. Considerations for Using CATs
 Explain purpose: What will the students and I learn
from this CAT?
 Ongoing process.
 Provide feedback regarding CAT to students –
make feedback data public: Feedback matters.
 Anonymous.
 Feedback informs teaching practice.
 Changes norms of student involvement.

9. Items
 Open-ended Questions
– Clarification/details
– Not all possible responses are known
– No statistical analysis
 Closed-ended Questions
– Likert Scale
– Multiple Choice
– Ordinal
– Categorical
– Numerical

10. Examples
 Open-ended, teaching directed:
– What could we do to improve your learning in
this class?
– Start, Stop, Continue
– Index card: What’s working? What’s not
working?
– Brief questionnaire: no more than 12
questions (pace, assignments, use of class
time, etc.)

11. Examples
 Open-Ended, Learning Directed:
– Most Important Point, Muddiest Point
– Clickers
– At what moment in this class this past week
did you feel most engaged? Most distant?
– What about this class this week surprised
you the most? What action by the teacher did
you find most helpful? Most confusing?

12. Common Mistakes
 Too specific
 Too general
 Leading
 Too many items in one question
 Too many questions

13. Working with Student Feedback - Guidelines
 Content analysis, look for recurring themes,
frequency of comments.
 Try not to over-generalize (all instruction
doesn’t work equally well for all students).
 Put negative comments in perspective.
 Focus on student learning (not “do they like
me?”).
 Identify constructive ways to use the feedback.

14. Side Benefits
 Student perspective of teaching environment –
reflective teaching.
 Sense of community, builds trust: “our class”
 Student ownership – reflective learners.
 Reinforcement of what supports student
learning (what students do, what the instructor
does).
 Alerts to problems before disaster develops.

15. Caveats
 Don’t ask questions to which you don’t want
the answer.
 Ask students about aspects of their learning
experience that you can do something about
and are willing to change.
 You don’t need to incorporate all students’
suggestions: Pedagogical judgment.

16. Next Steps
 Decide what you want to assess.
 Schedule feedback at appropriate times.
 Encourage meaningful feedback: tell
students you will summarize, ask for
concrete examples, observable behaviors,
give preferences and alternatives
 Use different techniques through out the
term.

17. Sources for Evaluating Teaching Effectiveness
Instructor
Self Report Student Perception Data
Colleague Evaluation Student
(external) Performance
Administrator Peer Evaluation
Evaluation (internal)
Provided by: Don Wulff, Ph.D., University of Washington, 1995.

18. Student Feedback
Is like a dancer’s mirror.
It improves one’s ability
to see and improve
one’s performance.
Alexander Astin, 1993

19. References
 Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) provided by Field-tested Learning
Assessment Guide for science, math, engineering, and technology instructors,
University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Faculty across disciplines talk about why they have used a particular CAT in
their teaching and examples are provided.
<http://www.flaguide.org/cat/cat.php>
 Cross, P., & Angelo, T. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A
handbook for college teachers (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
 Huba, M., & Freed, J. ((2000). Learner-centered assessment on college
campuses. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Chapter 5.
 Lang, J. (2007). Did you learn anything? The Chronicle of Higher Education
Chronicle Careers, March 5.
<http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2007/03/2007030501c/careers.html>
 Suskie, L. (2004). Assessing student learning. A common sense guide.
Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing.
 Weimer, M. (1993). Improving your classroom teaching. Newbury Park, CA:
Sage Publications. Chapter 7: Assessing their learning and your teaching,
pp. 97-122.