Seeing through students' eyes: Using reaction surveys to create clarity

Photo by David Underland on Unsplash

I taught biochemistry labs for nine years. I've written two laboratory manuals. I've written countless experimental protocols over my career. I've even coded in R. If there's one thing I'm good at, it's providing clear, step-by-step instructions!

Or at least I thought I was. This semester has been humbling. I've spent the last two weeks, in particular, fielding far more questions than usual about an assignment I've been giving students for years. For reasons that aren't at all clear, the instructions I've been using have stopped working. Indeed, they seem to be the source of confusion where before they provided clarity.

Obviously, something has shifted. My guess is that our learning management system has tweaked some feature, perhaps even several features. In theory, that ought to be easy to track down, simply go into our learning management system, open up the assignment in student view, and follow my instructions to see where they break down. 

In practice? Ugh! The student view offered by most learning management systems is mostly useless. It's fine if all you need is aesthetic information about how your materials will appear to students. If you need to see how an assignment actually works for students? Forget it. 

So, what do you do when you need to write clear instructions but you have no clear idea what your students see when they interact with the assignment? 

The answer, of course, is to find ways to see through their eyes. In a face-to-face course, you can usually get a student volunteer to go through the assignment on their computer in front of you so you can see how things are laid out and take notes. 

In an asynchronous online course, that's a lot harder to do. Much easier is to debrief students after an assignment using reaction surveys. 

These don't need to be exhaustive. In fact, the shorter the better. For instance, the reaction survey I'm using for this assignment is just three items:

• The purpose of the peer review assignment was clear.
• The connection between the peer review assignment and course learning outcomes was clear.
• I understood each step and felt prepared to complete the peer review assignment.

For each item, students can answer "agree", "somewhat agree", or "disagree". I've also included space for them to elaborate on what could be clearer.

It's a simple thing. It took me all of 10 minutes to set up in our learning management system, and I expect most students will spend less than 5 minutes completing it. But I also expect it's going to be invaluable. I have two more major assignments this semester with the same structure and workflow. Getting students' feedback now will help me improve those experiences. 

It will also let students know that I genuinely care about their feedback. End-of-the-semester evaluations have their own utility, but they can only help future classes. They do nothing for the students in front of you right now. Worse, when students can't see the changes their feedback inspires, it only magnifies their sense that professors don't care. 

Sometimes you can't help but teach in the dark. Students, though, bring their own light. Don't be afraid to ask them to shine.