Building Teaching and Learning Communities by Giving Voice to Students: Informal Mid-term Student Evaluation to Enhance Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Effective feedback allows teachers to review, reflect and improve their teaching practices. Students’ feedback is key to this process as they are no doubt an important stakeholder in the teaching and learning communities. Student evaluations are typically conducted at the end of each course or each term in most universities. Some researchers doubt the effectiveness of the traditional form of evaluation as it usually takes a long time before teachers can see students’ feedback from the evaluation results. It is argued that some students do not have strong incentive to provide genuine feedback because they know that their comments will not benefit them before the relevant course finishes and hence the generally low response rate for the end-of-term evaluations. This paper seeks to investigate the effectiveness of an alternative form of student evaluation, an informal mid-term student evaluation of their teachers which is conducted when the course is taught half-way through, as a tool to enhance both learning and teaching. The paper reports on the preliminary findings of a research on both students’ and teachers’ perceptions of the pilot implementation of this mid-term student evaluation. Students from the tutorials of three different post-graduate law courses taught by the researcher participated in the mid-term evaluation. At the same time, part-time tutors of two different post-graduate law courses were also invited to participate in the trial implementation of this mid-term evaluation on a voluntary basis. Data was collected using paper questionnaires distributed to the students and the teachers at the end of the relevant term. Preliminary data shows that students were more willing to provide honest comments and more satisfied with the mid-term evaluation as a tool to enhance learning as compared to the traditional end-of-term evaluation. In forming these positive perceptions, students indicated one of the most important factors being their belief that their teachers care about their feedback. This is supported by the argument in some literature that a caring relationship and learning environment generates positive impact on the learning experience and motivation of students. The study also indicated that the students’ belief that there is actual benefit of the evaluation to themselves is another important factor which affects their perception of the mid-term evaluation. However, this largely depends on whether the teacher actually makes extra effort to address students’ comments in the remaining classes. Realistically, teachers are unable to address all of the students’ comments, hence it is important for the teachers to manage students’ expectations appropriately before they conduct the mid-term evaluation. Preliminary data shows that the teachers generally found the students’ comments constructive, but some indicated that they received comments on the course, of which they were unable to make any changes as a tutor, rather than on their teaching. This again shows the importance of managing students’ expectations for the mid-term evaluation as that would affect the kind of comments received from them and in turn would affect the teachers’ perception of its effectiveness. Overall, with students being more willing to provide honest comments and more written comments received, and with the creation of a caring relationship and learning environment, a stronger teaching and learning community could be built.