Somewhere I read that mid-semester evaluations were good opportunities to check how a course was going so that you can make any adjustments needed and potentially save a course that might have been going poorly. You can also use them to continue doing what works and to even foster habits of reflection and adjustment among your students. I also believe that you can reinforce student buy-in by taking their feedback into consideration in adjusting based on their feedback.
I have generally adopted the practice of evaluating midstream so that I can in fact make adjustments and to allow students an opportunity to pause and reflect on what has happened, where they want to go and how to get there. These are good life skill practices and good for the course. I find that the day I return midterm exams is a good time to do this kind of evaluation. Consequently, I’ve spent my spring break grading mid-term exams and reflecting on my courses. When I return to school next week, I’ll be armed with plans to revise and revitalize my courses and questions to engage students in the process.
Check Progress against the Road Map
I went back to look at my initial goals for the course and evaluated how I have been doing on helping students to become adept analyzers of historical texts—primary and secondary–and how they have been able to integrate the two. The midterm exam was designed around these explicit skills. Besides asking them to demonstrate knowledge of specific people, events and ideas on the midterm,I also asked questions that required them to integrate this knowledge with bigger ideas reflected in secondary sources. Questions invited them to compare and contrast interpretations, use primary sources to form their own interpretations and describe and explain changes over time.
What I found is that most students demonstrated a good grasp of the ideas and events but were less adept at creating new interpretations based on evidence. I attribute this to the confines of exam: they had to answer questions they did not know were coming at them. The remainder of the semester they will not have this constraint, and so I will use this exam as an opportunity to point out to them that they should focus on developing their own interpretations based on primary evidence an secondary interpretations. These skills are going to be important for them to demonstrate in their subsequent reflection papers and final paper. This midterm helps set some clear goals for the final half of the semester and the subsequent assignments.
Shift Gears
The (ostensible) respite of spring break offers a nice opportunity to shift gears and introduce new elements into courses in order to freshen up the approaches and hopefully infuse some energy. In one of my classes, the energy has been kind of low. This was true from the beginning and I attributed it in part to the classroom set up. I find that classes that have a lot of empty space in the middle—like chairs formed in a circle as opposed to seminar tables—tend to loose a lot of energy. I imagine ideas skittering across seminar tables, but dropping into the abyss in the middle of the classroom circle. Aesthetic concerns aside—since I can’t change the furniture in the room—shifting gears and class dynamics seems to be more in order.
This one class is small and so that puts some pressure on students to prepare and perform for each class. In some groups the size of the class is enough to motivate students to participate; in others more coaxing or formal direction is needed. In this case I plan to promote more student engagement by turning over the reigns to them. I will emphasize the pre-class preparation assignments more and delegate responsibility for kicking off discussion to individual or pairs of students. To pull this off effectively, we will have to meet to discuss their plans, and this will also increase the level of engagement with the material and contact time for me and the students.
Encourage Student Reflection and Input
I usually perform some sort of mid-semester evaluation. In the past I have used the same institutional evaluation that will be administered at the end of the semester. Other times I have used the most bare bones assessment: What’s working? What’s not working? What else do you want to tell me? This semester, I want to encourage students to reflect on their own preparation for the course, what they are enjoying and what they want to achieve. (Many of my students shared that they were taking the course for credit or because a friend recommended it—not because they had some deep desire to learn the material or to become history majors. So it does not make sense for me to have them evaluate their progress according to their goals). I do want students to think about their own performance, what they enjoy and what they can do to foster more enjoyment and learning. I hope I can also gauge from these evaluations, what adjustments I can make to better tailor the class to the actual students I have rather than the ones I imagined when I designed the course before the semester began.
When classes resume on Monday, I’ll be armed with a new set of strategies and a self/course evaluation for students. Students will have a chance to evaluate the course before they see how I have evaluated them. This way, they needn’t worry that their grades will be affected by the candor of their responses. Neither will I have to worry that students are either trying to curry favor or take out aggressions on me for the grades they hope to or have received. Together, we will chart a path for the remainder of the semester. Hopefully, we will end up well and finally warm!
