Spring 1993

Using a Mid-Term Evaluation to Give Students
Responsibility for the Course
Nancy Loevinger, Graduate Instructor, Department of English

When I teach ENWR 101, the basic composition course for the College, we are required to notify our students of their mid-term progress. At this time, I have always handed out a list of evaluation questions for the students to evaluate me also. This semester I modified my procedure to allow the students not only to evaluate me, but to evaluate each other.

Previously, my class had consisted of a bunch of disparate individuals who stumbled into the room half-awake, and often half-prepared, put their heads down on the desk, and generally resisted attempts to get them to enter whatever discussion we were supposed to be having. All my previous attempts to correct this problem had failed. I tried glaring at students who were talking to each other during discussion, but they looked at me and kept on talking. I tried asking students to paraphrase each other's remarks during discussion, but they answered, "I wasn't listening." Finally, when it was time for mid-term evaluations, I included two new questions for the students to answer:

1. "What is the one thing you want me to do to improve the course?"
2. "What is the one thing you want the other students to do to improve the course?"

The students gave remarkably honest responses to these questions. They did not hesitate to criticize themselves and the other students for failing to participate fully in the class.

After receiving all the evaluations, I typed the responses on one page, selecting those that should be most helpful from the other questions on the evaluation, but including all the responses to Question #2 above. I then distributed this page of responses to the class along with brief comments on what responses I had received and on how I would attempt to answer those responses directed at me. I don't know whether it was the objective analysis of writing down the answer to the question, or the peer pressure of reading what other students had said about their behavior, but I noticed a distinct change in my class after this point. The students became more active in class discussion and came to class more prepared, probably because they were more conscious of how the other students perceived them, and they wanted to live up to the standards that they themselves had set.

In sum, I recommend giving students mid-term evaluation questions, such as those discussed by Charles Heuchert in the November 1992 Teaching Concerns, but I would also stress the value of adding a question that makes the students come to terms with their own responsibility for their education.