The end of semester is a good time for you to do as you ask of your students: reflect upon your course and your delivery of the course. Taking time to consider successful and unsuccessful moments in the course can give you inspiration for making changes so the next time you offer the course you’ll be more confident and your students will have the opportunity to be more successful.

Hopefully, you will be getting some good feedback from your students on the standard Instructional Assessment System (IAS) evaluation, but you won’t get the results until next mid-semester. If you want immediate feedback, or if you don’t normally get the feedback that you think is meaningful or helpful enough to make changes, consider creating your own survey using questions that will specifically address some of your concerns. Create a form using UA Google apps and ask students to complete the survey by giving them the form URL. Review the results in a spreadsheet that is automatically populated as students complete the form.

Did you make changes this semester based on a previous ref lection or IAS results that still aren’t working? Sometimes different cohorts of students react differently to the same method. You might consider sticking with a method for a couple of semesters before making changes.

PLACES TO KEEP YOUR REFLECTIONS

The most obvious is on your personal computer. Many instructors have a folder for each semester. Other storage spots could be on your Google Drive or Dropbox account. Some instructors create a folder (made unavailable to students) in the Blackboard course shell. Items in this folder could include the reflection, IAS results, articles or resources that might be added for next time, copyright permission acknowledgements and other pieces of information or thoughts you have about the course. Most likely when you offer the course again you’ll refer back to the previous offering’s blackboard information to copy into your new semester’s course shell. And voilá…there are your notes!

QUESTIONS TO ASK

As you reflect upon the semester, ask yourself these kinds of questions:

• Are there concepts that students are constantly getting stuck on or that take them more time and more explanation to understand?
• Are there assignments that don’t get the results you expected or that you have to explain how to accomplish until you feel like you should just do it yourself?
• What method did you use that was really successful? Is it possible to apply this to other topics or assignments?
• Was there a student assignment or discussion that really stood out? How can you leverage that example?
• Were students more engaged at certain times of the semester? How can you keep that engagement going?
• At the end of the course are your students achieving the course outcomes you set out?

ASSISTANCE

If you want to brainstorm ideas, if you are looking for ways to improve your teaching, or if want to use technology as a more effective tool in the classroom, contact UAF CTL.

RESOURCES

UAF IAS: www.uaf.edu/provost/student-opinion-of-instruction/

Google Forms: distance.uaf.edu/go/google-form

Google Drive: learn.googleapps.com/drive

Dropbox: dropbox.co