Evaluation

Methods

In courses using the Feedback Manager, surveys, focus groups with students, faculty, and course coordinators, as well as field observations of participating course sections were conducted.

Students

Preliminary results suggest that students don't expect much interaction with faculty, but when faculty provided feedback via the tool, students highly valued the feedback.

Quotes from Students

"I really appreciated it, and for him to take the time and go through all of them. It felt good saying 'yes, you are on the right track', because he is the professor and he's been in that field for a long time."

"When you actually get a personal feedback response, it makes you feel like they do care that we're students that they're teaching, and they want us to learn things."

"With multiple choice, someone has already written the answer for you, in their own [words] and syntax. But when you write the answer, you have to make sure you're putting your thoughts together correctly."

Faculty

Faculty participating in the beta test chose to give feedback to every student answer. They feared that by only giving feedback to a subset of students, they might be leaving a student with a misconception. For large classes, this effort was not sustainable. The report form, including typical student responses and faculty feedback, was not available for the beta test. The assessment of other options for implementation which require less instructor time will be a goal for the coming year.

UW-Madison faculty reported that student responses included student misconceptions that would not have been revealed by multiple choice questions because the instructor would not have included it as a distractor.

Wording of questions that require student thinking, but do not require long answers are difficult to create. Also, faculty found it helpful to try out questions on each other to test for clarity.