Student Evaluations (IDEA)

By the second to the last week of your course, you will receive an email indicating your IDEA course evaluation is ready for students to access---they will receive that same notification. We view student evaluations as a means to continued teaching improvement, a path to course improvement, and a way to honor the experiences and aspirations of our students. Please assertively encourage your students to complete the IDEA survey to provide constructive and actionable feedback to you. We find that a Course Announcement or email reminding students that you take their feedback seriously is a good way to continue to cultivate your connection with your students and to increase your response rate on the survey too.

Three ways to increase IDEA response rates in your class:

1. Create a video for your class highlighting the importance of student evaluations and how they are used. Example- http://somup.com/cYn1YvhQgs.

2. Tell your students that their thoughts and constructive feedback matters to you and that you value the time they take to fill out the survey.

3. Work to create a classroom climate that centers on mutual respect between instructor and student.

No matter how you work to contextualize IDEA surveys, be sure to genuinely ask your students to provide your feedback (in IDEA, but throughout the course, too). Need some guidance on interpreting the results? Visit IDEA's helpdesk on this topic.

You could also consider using a mid-term pulse-check with your students as a means of gauging how things are going and to identify any corrections you can be making fo the remainder of the course.