The teacher reflects on and continuously improves own teaching and materals.

Critical reflection of your teaching is a good practice and can lead to improvement. When collecting feedback for reflection, you can look to different sources for information: students’ perspectives, colleagues’ perspectives, personal experiences, or theory/evidence (Brookfield, 2017). Critical reflection can be difficult but is linked to improvement in teaching. Similar to what we are frequently asking students to do, “to reflect, one must slow down, remain curious, and tolerate ambiguity” (ACUE, 2018).

Listed below are strategies adapted from the Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning, Oakland University, and the University of Waterloo for engaging in critical reflection of your teaching.

Reflecting Based on Student Feedback

• While course evaluations can be a useful tool to capture a summative overview of a student’s learning and experience in a course, they do little to provide feedback on how to improve a course that is in progress. Engaging your students in formative and low-stakes assessment will provide your students an outlet for giving you actionable feedback on how to improve and/or continue your support of students in your course.

You can approach the types of questions you ask through several lenses – you may want to gauge learning, get a sense of what students think about the course, or see how students' lives are being affected outside of school. First, establish your purpose, then design your question protocol or tool. Some examples of questions include:

• What helps/hinders your learning in this course?
• What suggestions do you have for me to improve learning in this course?
• What do you like most/least about this course so far?
• What should we start/stop/keep doing in this course?
• What specific advice would you give to help your instructor improve learning in this course?

Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) are simple, non-graded activities to gather feedback from students on teaching and learning. They are not meant to assess an individual student’s understanding, but to gather understanding from the whole class. They can be done in person or through technology tools. For more information about CATs, visit Vanderbilt University's Center for Teaching.

Here are two examples that you may want to utilize in your course:

1. MINUTE PAPER: Give students one minute to respond to 2 questions - “What is the most important thing you learned today?” and “What is something important you still need to learn?” The papers should be collected, but anonymous. You can do this on an actual sheet of paper in a face-to-face course, create a shared Word Document, share the link with students, and have students type in the information anonymously. You could also create a 1 question open response question in Microsoft Forms.
2. MUDDIEST POINT: Give students the opportunity to respond to the question, “What was the most confusing point during class today?” Like the minute paper, you can do this on a notecard/piece of paper in a face-to-face course, through a shared Word Document, or through a Microsoft Form.

Whether collected via end-of-semester evaluation, mid-semester check-in, or by using a CAT, Institute for Teaching & Learning (ITL) staff are available to help you make meaning of your students’ feedback. Book a consult with ITL staff.

Reflecting Based on your Colleagues’ Feedback

Reflecting Based on Research and Theory