The Early Semester Course Feedback (ESCF) is an optional tool to solicit student feedback in your courses. It was created and developed by the Teaching and Assessment Faculty Senate Committee (TACO).
With the ESCF, students are able to indicate what is working well, where they are experiencing challenges or concerns, and other thoughts regarding the course. You can use this feedback to inform adjustments to your course and/or teaching. The purpose of the ESCF is to inform the individual instructor of possibilities for course improvement. Therefore, the course level data is not automatically shared with administrators nor is it uploaded to Digital Measures.
The ESCF is normally launched separately for 8-week (x2) and 16-week courses during fall and spring terms as an opt-in survey. For 16-week courses, the ESCF window normally opens during the fourth week of the semester and normally closes 24-48 hours prior to midterm grades being due. You can choose to make the ESCF available to your students and specify a close date anytime during this window. The ESCF is also available for 8-week courses. The survey window will be adjusted to reflect the condensed course schedule, so the ESCF should be made available to students at an earlier point in the course, usually within the first two weeks.
Using the ESCF
If you want to opt-in, you can manage its use in your course on the SEI Dashboard. The ESCF includes a set of standard questions, but you can choose to create two additional questions. You have a choice to add an open-ended question and/or a question in the format of the Student Perception of Teaching (SPOT) instrument.
Since the standard questions are designed to be generic, you can use these additional questions to solicit student feedback on a specific part of your course. For example, if you are using a specific strategy or tool in your course, you may want to include a question to allow students to share their thoughts on that strategy or tool. You could also include an open-ended question that plainly asks students to list out what is working and/or what suggestions they have.
Instructions to set up the ESCF can be found in the WVU ITS Help Center, as well as a timeline for managing the surveys.
ESCF Questions
For all closed-ended questions the response options are Beneficial to my learning
(BL), Neutral to my learning (NL), Not helpful to my learning (NHL), and Not
applicable (NA).
Instructors are allowed to enter one custom question on their own. The
TACO committee determined that the faculty member does not need to get TACO
approval for the custom question added to the ESCF. The scale for that custom
question is BL, NL, NHL, NA.
Below are the standard ESCF questions:
- Which best describes this course for you? Choose one.
- Requirement
- Elective
- General Education Foundation (GEF) course
- Other
- The manner in which concepts are being presented is BL, NL, NHL, NA
- Please elaborate was what helpful and not helpful on the way concepts are being presented. (Open ended)
- The methods the instructor uses to present information (Discussions, visual, recorded lecture, case studies, charts, reading assignments, etc.) are… BL, NL, NHL, NA
- Please elaborate on the beneficial and not helpful methods the instructor used to present information. (Open ended)
- The way the instructor conducts this class keeps me engaged in the learning process is… BL, NL, NHL, NA
- Describe a time in this class when you felt either the most engaged or least engaged in the learning process. (Open ended)
- The variety of assessment methods used so far by the instructor (quizzes, in class activities, multiple-choice questions, exams, research paper, etc.) that determines the overall course grade is… BL, NL, NHL, NA
- The ways that my instructor let me know how well I am doing in this course are… BL, NL, NHL, NA
- What has been most helpful to your learning experience in this class so far? (Open ended)
- Please describe ways that I (as your instructor) can better support your learning experience in this class. (Open ended)