Students Say Multiple Connections Make Learning Better and More Fun

This semester I tried something new — midterm course evaluations. I was inspired by Profhacker’s numerous posts on this issue over the years including George Williams’ post asking instructors to consider giving midterm course evaluation and Meg Worley’s post about how to get the most from midterm course evaluations. There are good reasons to conduct midterm course evaluations, but as a reflective practitioner (hello NWP) who regularly pushes both my students and the teachers I work with to pause and reflect on their work it seemed hypocritical not to practice what I preach.

I learned some interesting lessons for my own practice and got some ideas for future blog posts as well. This is a longer blog post than I usually like to write so I tried to break it up into chunks so you skim for the bits more relevant to your concerns and interests. Let me know if you’d like to know more about those tidbits and ideas and practices and I’ll address those in future blog posts.

A quick preview: I learned that while my students like multiple channels of communication they also prefer to use one platform. I also learned that my use of technology and interactive assignments means students are having fun while they are learning. Read on to learn more about how they feel about more specific assignments such as class blogs and be sure to tell me if you want to know more about my class assignments and activities and I’ll be sure to include those in a future blog post.

Read more about “What I Learned From Midterm Course Evaluations” on my Metawriting blog