University Letter

UND's faculty and staff newsletter

TTaDA offering opportunity for midterm student feedback

Take advantage of the opportunity for midterm student feedback! Consider requesting a Small Group Instructional Diagnosis today.

There is tremendous value in checking in with students and their learning while a course is in progress, especially given that the context for teaching has shifted dramatically in the last few years. Small Group Instructional Diagnosis is a voluntary, confidential feedback process administered by the Teaching Transformation and Development Academy that enables faculty and instructors to get frank, useful comments from students on a course still in progress.

Designed to increase communication between the students and the instructor with the aim of improving learning, the process uses small group student interviews to identify strengths of the course, areas of student concern around their learning and ways to address those concerns.

SGIDs require about 25 minutes of class time and are conducted by volunteer facilitators. UND faculty who have received special training in how to conduct instructor and student interviews according to the established SGID protocol.

All fall semester SGIDs must be completed by Nov. 23, 2022.

Click here to request an SGID.

Anyone teaching a class at UND (faculty, part-time instructors and GTAs) may request an SGID and the resulting report is exclusively for their benefit. Seminal research establishes that SGIDs:

  • allow faculty to identify the concerns, apprehensions, and misunderstandings that may be barriers to learning
  • increase student awareness of “the considerations and constraints that go into course planning and delivery”
  • facilitate “open discussions about course goals and the teaching-learning process”
  • increase faculty confidence around their teaching approach and its effectiveness

Additionally, faculty who have an SGID conducted in their course report “increased knowledge of alternative instructional tools and methods to meet their educational goals,” and gained “motivation to implement new approaches and/or modify existing techniques.”*

If you have additional questions about requesting an SGID, please contact TTaDA.

If you have questions about the process, contact Anne Kelsch or Anna Kinney.

*Miriam Rosalyn Diamond, “The usefulness of structured mid-term feedback as a catalyst for change in higher education classes,” Active Learning in Higher Education (November 2004) 5:217-23.