How can Kirkwood faculty better understand their students?
Library Services published a couple photos of a whiteboard they put up in the Cedar Rapids main campus library, which you can see by clicking on the link below:
Kirkwood students say…how their professors can better understand them.
One helpful resource comes from the March 2011 issue of Educational Leadership, which says, “Perhaps the most powerful message from the research is that relationships are a matter of student perception. They have little to do with how a teacher actually feels about students; it’s what teachers do that dictates how students perceive those relationships.” To read more, please visit http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar11/vol68/num06/Relating-to-Students@-It%27s-What-You-Do-That-Counts.aspx
KCELT is working on a project that may help resolve some of these issues. Until then, how have other faculty faced and addressed them with positive results? Please share here or on Library Services’ blog at http://kirkwoodlibrary.wordpress.com/ or both.
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This is really great! It is also a really timely post. Yesterday at the MTP Year 1 meeting, Rich suggested that the faculty consider doing mid-semester evaluations (students of the faculty member) regarding their teaching. He said they could be anonymous or they could opt to reveal themselves. Angel apparently has a function to do this, but I don’t know how. (Wilson, do you know?). Rich also pointed out the import of “closing the loop” and responding to student comments/questions/concerns (in the aggregate, if there are trends, etc.) and to advise how this information will inform the remainder of the semester. I will do this with my 101 class and I’ve done this in the past with great success – very important to close the loop so the students know you did not conduct the survey just for the sake of it (“going through the motions”).