Using Midterm Student Evaluations of Teaching to Provide Actionable Results

Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are an important tool for assessing the quality of college instruction. Moreover, midterm SETs have repeatedly been shown to be beneficial as a tool for eliciting useful student feedback. In contrast to conducting evaluations at the end of the semester, administering midterm evaluations allows instructors an opportunity to manage the course expectations of the students, with the potential of increasing student satisfaction. Nevertheless, compared with the copious research on end-of-term ratings based on SETs, very little evidence-based research has examined methods for conducting midterm evaluations and comparing them across different courses, teachers, departments, and institutions. A qualitative method, the Bare Bones Questioning approach (Snooks, Neeley, & Williamson, 2004), was used to receive developmental feedback from 70 physical education students in three different courses. Comments were organized into categories representing the characteristics that make up high-quality teaching, such as organization, scholarly coverage, rapport with students, and enthusiasm. Future research should emphasize only those comments that can lead to improvement, in order to make student evaluations easier to perform and more beneficial. It is recommended that if the faculty administers SETs in class, they should do so at the start of the session because this conveys to the students that the SETs are a priority and worthy of class time.