Using Surveys to Become a Life-Changing Nurse Educator
Do you dread the end-of-term feedback from students? 🤯
In social media communities and talking with peers, I have heard that reading student feedback at the end of an exhausting semester brings up a range of emotions - dread, relief, anger, surprise, or even gratitude. But collecting regular feedback from students is an excellent way to improve your teaching and help students in your class feel safe and heard.
Role of Feedback
Collecting student feedback regularly serves a few functions:
Evaluate student expectations
This is especially true if you use an active learning classroom. Questions such as "what are you expecting from an "active learning" course? If there is a disconnect or a gap between what students expect and how your course is structured, it can lead to feelings of overwhelm, stress, and anxiety. Students will feel and perform better when their expectations and reality are congruent. Collecting feedback gets you access to this information and allows you to bridge the gap early.
Assess resources
what tools are students actually using to understand the course material? When I took over my theory course, it had a LONG checklist of learning activities, articles to read, worksheets to complete, and online links. Through feedback, I found the most impactful ones that students used, gathered new resources they found on their own, and decluttered my learning activities.
Critically evaluate the additional resources that you offer to students. Then, use that Marie Kondo strategy, "does it bring value to your course?" and be merciless in deleting and decluttering your resources. Remember, students do not do optional, so anything labeled "optional" can be the first to go.
Improve your Teaching Style
This can be a tricky topic to guide students in providing feedback. To do this effectively:
🎗️Remind students about the purpose of the survey - to give them a voice and suggest changes that can help them perform better in class.
🤝🏽Ask students to be helpful, not hurtful. For example, you cannot just say this was the worst course you ever took. Be specific and provide COURSE qualities that do not match your learning style.
🗒️Give specific, detailed instructions on the information that would be most beneficial to you. Otherwise, there will always be comments about you as a person that often lead to anger, frustration, and emotional responses.
Questions could focus on:
pace of instruction
approachability of the instructor
organization of the course
The most common complaint that I hear about active learning is that students have to teach themselves. Try to specifically address the standard "I prefer lecture" line when preparing the students to give feedback. Try questions such as: What did you not like about teaching yourself? Were the lecture videos challenging to watch or follow? Did you have trouble focusing on the content outside of class? Did the in-class activities not match the recorded lecture?
As you build your active learning classroom, these responses give you much more valuable information.
When to Collect Feedback
In short, don't wait until the end of the semester to ask students to complete a feedback survey. Here is some research to support this idea:
A 2019 study (Kumar et al., 2019) looked at the teaching styles of eight online educators who won awards from professional organizations. A common theme in these interviews was that the award-winning educators used "data for continuous improvement." They developed surveys specific to their teaching style and distributed them throughout the term. In addition, they also used the data they collected to make immediate changes.
A small 2017 study (McConnell & Dodd, 2017) found that educators who collected early feedback in the course and implemented some minor changes had significantly higher end-of-course feedback than those who did not collect early feedback.
This concept is known as "early-term feedback" and can be incredibly helpful in creating a learning partnership with students and building a trusting relationship.
How to Collect Feedback
I did not find any research for this article that suggested the "best" way to collect feedback. But I believe it is like an exercise program - the best choice for you is the one you will do consistently. Here are a few options:
Paper and pencil ✏️ simple, no learning curve, easy to implement. You can have a formalized worksheet or just a scrap of paper. It can be planned out or spur of the moment. For example, if you notice that many students performed poorly on last week's quiz, consider an informal paper and pencil feedback assignment asking, "How did you perform on last week's assignments? If you didn't do well, why is that? If you scored well, why is that?" This short and simple survey can give valuable information about what was happening.
Online survey tool 💻medium complexity, students likely to understand, need to plan ahead. An example would be setting up a Google Form to collect information from students after the first exam. This simple survey tool will allow you to gather more concrete numbers and present more organized data. In addition, this will enable students to submit anonymously.
Formal questionnaire in learning management system 🗂️ This is the standard data collection tool for the big, end-of-term course evaluation. But you can also use it to distribute and organize smaller quizzes as feedback surveys.
In addition, if your school or department has a standardized end-of-term feedback tool, see if you can offer feedback about the questions that are asked. For example, if you find that one particular question does not gather useful data or always leads to hurtful responses from students, look to modify it. Bring past student responses to your leadership and ask for a change. It doesn't have to be included in the survey just because it has always been there.
What Questions to Ask
Choosing questions to ask can be tough! And like most things in life and nursing ... it depends. It depends on what class you teach, what your student population is like, what struggles you are having, what data you want to collect, etc.
One option is open-ended questions. They will provide insights you can take action on and allow the students to explain.
Questions with a numeric scale are often a good option, especially for larger groups of students. For example, allowing students to rank a statement from 1-5 will allow you to gauge how most of the class felt about a topic.
I have included a quick reference sheet of open-ended and numeric scale questions that you can include in your feedback tools.
Sample Questions for Gathering Meaningful Student Feedback
Use these sample questions to gather information from your students that will help cultivate a trusting learning environment.
Looking for the template of this document, click below!
Using Student Feedback
Once you collect the information, try discussing the findings with students.
For example - a nursing instructor collects feedback on assignments for their leadership course. Multiple students note that the big assignment deadline for the leadership course falls on the same date as the deadlines for their other classes. They suggest a softer deadline for this assignment.
You bring this information to your next meeting with the students and start the discussion:
“I understand that deadlines can be difficult” (showing empathy) 💜,
”but I cannot modify them for this course” (setting boundary) ✋🏽
”because you would not finish the content in time for the exam” (giving a reason) ⏱️
”I will accept assignments early, and you can work ahead in this course. If you need help, we can set up smaller, milestone assignments to keep you on track.” (offer an alternative). 🪴”
This simple exercise can change the tone and culture of a classroom. Students have the opportunity to voice their concerns, and the educator has demonstrated that they value their opinions and perspectives. All while still maintaining a high standard and keeping that deadline.
Final Thoughts
Awesome, you are excited about collecting feedback from your students!
1️⃣ Before you get started, however, be honest with yourself about how much mental space you have to engage with the feedback. There is absolutely no point in collecting the information if you cannot take action. If you are not physically, mentally, and emotionally ready to make a change, the worst thing you can do is collect information from students. Doing this will likely damage your relationship with students and diminish the trusting relationship you are working to build.
2️⃣ In addition, remember that not all student feedback has merit, nor does every request require immediate action. You are ultimately the educator in control of your classroom and the learning environment, and you must choose what will be most beneficial to yourself and your students. Be judicious, be a curator, and be selective about what suggestions you implement. Start a list (maybe even a Notion database!) to keep ideas to implement later or that you can revisit when you start the class again next semester. While many will make you believe that everything is a rush and you need to change it all NOW, I want to assure you that you have plenty of time in your teaching career to make adjustments and refine your craft—one activity at a time.
3️⃣Finally, this is a no-pressure zone. Maybe you have been collecting feedback and never looking at it or asking yes/no questions on your surveys. Take this whole article and bookmark it for later. Use parts and pieces of the suggestions to create a feedback system that works for you. Don't be too hard on yourself. Let go of that guilt, and then make just one small change to how you interact with student feedback.
Looking for additional articles about being an effective nurse educator?
There are practical, easy-to-implement tools over at the Idea Bank (a blog with great articles 😉)
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References
Kumar, S., Martin, F., Budhrani, K., & Ritzhaupt, A. (2019). Award-winning faculty online teaching practices: Elements of award-winning courses. Online Learning, 23(4). https://olj.onlinelearningconsortium.org/index.php/olj/article/view/2077/868
McDonnell, G. P., & Dodd, M. D. (2017). Should students have the power to change course structure? Teaching of Psychology, 44(2), 91–99.
Another helpful article on collecting early term feedback, including sample questions, can be found HERE.