Online Course Peer Review

Four or five years ago, LSC faculty attended a duty day held at the DECC. The keynote speaker challenged us to work toward continuously improving our courses throughout the semester by asking students for their anonymousfeedback. I remember thinking “sure, great idea!”, but when it came right down to it, incorporating a “How’s Susan doing?” forum into the online discussion area was daunting. Why on earth would I want to open myself up to potentially nasty things students might post? I thought I was doing a good job and student evaluations at the end of the semester were mostly positive. Wasn’t that enough?

Well, I decided to try out the idea in one of my smaller online classes. Part of the requirement of the forum was that students had to post anonymously (I didn’t want them to post over-the-top nice things about the class with the hopes of getting on my good side. Ha!). I didn’t get a great deal of feedback in the forum, but a few students did post some thoughtful feedback that enabled me to make some minor changes during the semester. I’ve since incorporated the forum into all of my classes — removing it during the last weeks of each semester as students seem to want to post their final thoughts on the class thereinstead ofcompleting an official course evaluation.

Still, try it — honest feedback can be helpful and improving our classes is what it’s all about!