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During Term: Support and Feedback

Feedback is the single most effective way to improve your teaching. You can get it from your students, fellow teachers, or pedagogy professionals. For getting good student feedback, we recommend the use of midterm evaluations.

Midterm evaluations

Midterm evaluations are a simple and effective way to gauge how your section or class is going. Simply the act of collecting feedback and discussing the results with your students can improve the classroom atmosphere. Aim to collect midterm feedback just before half the term has passed: when you have settled into a class, but with enough time left in the term to make changes. It's a good idea to share the results with your students the following week and talk them through what is going well, and what changes you will (or will not) be making and why.

Open-ended questions tend to be more informative than "rating 1-5" questions, and you can write your own questionnaire that differs from the end-of-term evaluations produced centrally by the Q. Here are some example midterm review questions and questionnaires:

Feel free to contact the DTF to talk through the results of your evaluations and arrive at big-picture take-aways together - alone it is easy to fixate on a lone negative comment!

Peer Observation and Videotaping

You can arrange for a peer or professional to attend your class and give you feedback, or to have your section videotaped and viewed with your Departmental Teaching Fellow. 

The Bok Center offers free videotaping of sections, either in their custom-built classrooms, or via a camera in your usual classroom. After a videotaping, you meet with the Departmental Teaching Fellow (or, if you prefer, another professional at the Bok Center) for a confidential, non-evaluative viewing of the tape. You and your consultant together discuss how the class went, whether you met your teaching goals, and brainstorm ways to improve your teaching. 

Here is a short video to introduce you to the merits of section videotaping.

Peer observation works similarly, but in real-time. Either the Departmental Teaching Fellow or one of your peer teachers can sit in on a class and talk to you about their observations. For a comparison of peer observation and videotaping, see this Bok Center page. 

Here is a short video to introduce you to the merits of peer observation.

Confidential Consultations

The Departmental Teaching Fellow is also available for confidential chats about any issues that arise during teaching. E-mail to make an appointment, or come to office hours.