Shortening the Feedback Loop
Crafting environments of growth through mid-semester feedback.
3 min read
In my first year teaching foundation studio courses at UVA, I built a mid-semester feedback instrument, a shared evaluation form and a round of one-on-one interviews. This allowed the students and me to correct the course while the semester was still running instead of learning about what hadn’t worked after it was over. The exchange surfaced a clear request for tougher criticism, which I acted on in the second half of the semester. It also surfaced a common request I chose not to fill.
Problem
Studio teaching runs on a feedback cycle that is asymmetrical and unhelpful. The only formal instrument inviting students to give feedback is the end-of-semester course evaluation. Practically speaking, this means that instructors only find out what wasn’t working for a group after the group moves on. Every correction lands on the next cohort, who are different people and often have different needs.
Research
As a new instructor, I had no way to know how I was doing in a course while I could still act on it. The only formal feedback channel ran one direction, at the end of the semester. Students were in the same position, but in reverse; they would receive continuous feedback on individual projects but nothing telling them how they were tracking overall until grades landed. The department had just introduced a new studio grading rubric with validated criteria I could use for this mid-semester check point.
Using the architecture department’s rubric as a guide, I created a form where students and I could evaluate their performance using the same criteria. I also wrote a series of prompts encouraging them to share open-ended feedback about their experience with my teaching. The students and I met one on one for interviews where we exchanged and discussed our feedback.
Insights
Asking students to evaluate their instructor, on its own, invites politeness. Making the exchange mutual reframed it from asymmetrical judgment into a shared read on how the partnership was going. Borrowing the department’s rubric legitimized the criteria and aligned the feedback for students with how they would be evaluated at the end of the semester. The one-on-one interview format likely cost some candor, but the format allowed for specific and personalized follow-up questions that added depth.
Solution
The formal pause and solicitation of feedback brought out critical feedback that shaped the remainder of the course (e.g. more opportunities for presentation preparation or more critical feedback in desk critiques). The most common request from students was for more prescriptive direction on when their designs were “correct.” I declined to accommodate this particular request, despite its popularity, on two grounds. First, I felt that experimentation is important at the foundation level. Second, key learning outcomes of the course were for the students to develop the skills of constructing an argument and accurately judging whether their work supported that argument. Telling them which decisions were “correct” would eliminate important elements of their learning.
Outcome
The mid-semester feedback worked to improve my teaching and student learning outcomes within the semester. As one student wrote in the formal end of semester evaluation, “After the mid term our section gave him feedback that we need more constructive criticism and he followed through with that and I felt more challenged by the end of the semester.”
Across both semesters in which I employed this practice, I achieved ratings on feedback quality higher than the department average (4.50 vs 4.10 in fall and 4.67 vs 4.08 in spring).
Students still asked for more prescriptive guidance in their final course evaluations: “...that would’ve helped me as a new and inexperienced designer figure out what the ‘correct’ and ‘better’ design choice is…” However, I feel that holding firm on this point was important to support the key learning objectives of the studio courses.