How do educators know if their courses are effective? Or relevant? Or engaging?

GEARED faculty, with help from Dr. Matt Champagne, are finding out.

“Gathering and action on student feedback while courses are still in session consistently deliver positive outcomes, yet 92% of colleges do not administer any formal ‘midstream evaluation’ process to gather student feedback,” contends Champagne.

With Champagne’s help, GEARED faculty are administering midstream evaluations in solar courses while the training is still in session and while it still matters to students.

“The result has been more relevant course content, fewer obstacles to learning and a learning environment where instructors and students are more engaged.”

Uniquely crafted midstream evaluations for the Fall 2015 and Spring 2016 terms produced valuable information to improve course content and instruction. The key to success, according to Champagne, was the 15-item meta-evaluation tool. “This instrument has historically outperformed any other course evaluation instrument in terms of quantity of student feedback and interpretability of results.”

Faculty are very pleased with the results. They overwhelmingly felt the abundant student feedback was enormously useful and relevant in making modifications to their courses. “My students appreciated the opportunity to communicate with me about their needs,” wrote one professor. “Students were happy to see I was very serious about their feedback,” wrote another.

“Gathering timely and accurate student feedback and acting on that feedback while it still matters helps both students and instructors to succeed,” said Champagne.

See Champagne’s midstream evaluations here.

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