Informal feedback for teaching

If it takes you more than ten seconds to recall how many semesters you have taught at Monash, you probably are an experienced educator in higher education. Teaching has become second nature, and almost routined.

But you may also agree that no two student cohorts are the same, and you may face unique variables and teaching challenges every semester. And yet there is not always a standard approach to understanding how our diverse cohorts of students feel about different aspects of instructions and pedagogy. 

That's why it's important to talk about informal feedback for teaching.

Student feedback can be collected in the form of polls, suggestion boxed, questionnaires, informal discussion or conversations, focus groups, facilitated discussions, among many others (Harvey, 2003). Informal feedback may look at any aspects of teaching effectiveness as well as students' learning. Furthermore, whereby more summative evaluation of teaching focuses on the ratings and take places at the end of the semester, informal feedback focuses on teaching/ learning progress and can be used to inform the developmental purposes of the unit. 

Singh and Jha's 2014 study has found that there can be discrepancy between educator's own rating of their teaching effectiveness and students' rating. The authors recommended that informal feedback directly from students collected during the semester can be a reliable, "non-threatening and mutually beneficial" source of information to help educators enhance their teaching practice. 

If you would like to know more about informal feedback on teaching, here is the recording of a session I facilitated on this topic. You may find this guide to setting a Feedback activity in Moodle or using FLUX to collect student input helpful. 

While there is a large body of literature on the why and how of student feedback for teaching, there is much less spotlight on how educators receive and process student feedback, as well as the impact such feedback may have on educators. Here is Dr Amanda White walking us through how she unpacks feedback from students, and how to make it a constructive process: 

Having a 'growth mindset', as illustrated in the video below, can also support you and students in having a more positive relationship with giving and receiving feedback:

Giving students an opportunity to provide informal feedback does not only address a communication gap between students and educators, but also helps build rapport and increase students' trust in the educator's effort in creating the optimal learning experience (Singh and Jha, 2014). It's never too late to ask "what if...?", to check-in with students and understand how teaching and learning can be better.