feedback

Getting Feedback (Bok Center)

The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning encourages all instructors to solicit and respond to student feedback.

Qualtrics: Data & Analysis Basic Overview

Qualtrics may be used to acquire real-time feedback from students, including by way of course evaluations. Its reporting and data analysis is robust and is covered in depth within the support portal.

Using a student cohort to test and innovate new training materials


Tyler GianniniSusan FarbsteinTyler Giannini and Susan Farbstein, Clinical Professors of Law, pull back the curtain on pedagogy for students in the seminar Advanced Skills Training in Strategic Human Rights Advocacy by making them part of a learning community and giving them ownership over the learning process. For example, each year students work to improve simulations in which they originally were participants, in an earlier prerequisite seminar attached to the International Human Rights Clinic

Pushing students to confront limits by transforming the abstract to physical form


Megan Panzano, Into Practice HeadshotIn her Transformations course, Assistant Professor of Architecture Megan Panzano uses architectural design methods and concepts, and a workshop approach for giving feedback, to engage undergraduates from a wide range of concentrations. When students translate abstract ideas into physical form through a variety of materials and fabrication techniques (see photos below), they confront limits, question assumptions, and expand their problem-solving capacity.

 

 

Giving students practice with constructive criticism


Mark Mulligan, Associate Professor in Practice of Architecture, requires students in Tectonics Lab to work collaboratively on design-build projects of increasing complexity over the course of the semester that are subject to critique by peers, guest experts, and Mulligan himself. For example, with an assignment such as construction of a simple joint between two pieces of wood, “I tell them that we’re actually going to test the joint to its breaking point, so they know that they have to build something that can withstand real force;and to make it fun, I get everyone to predict where it is going to break”—a metaphor for gaining practice with receiving constructive criticism.

Research: Discouraged by Peer Excellence: Exposure to Exemplary Peer Performance Causes Quitting

Professor Todd Rogers co-authored a paper that showed subjects were more likely to quit an online course when they reviewed exemplary peer work, suggesting that exposure to exemplary peer performances can undermine motivation and success by causing people to perceive that they cannot attain their... Read more about Research: Discouraged by Peer Excellence: Exposure to Exemplary Peer Performance Causes Quitting

Assessing and Reflecting (SLATE)

The Strengthening Learning and Teaching Excellence (SLATE) Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School provides guidelines and strategies for gathering feedback from students.

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