At a Glance

In this guide for faculty and teaching teams, you’ll learn about technology tools you can use to collect student feedback. A well-designed poll or survey can help you collect feedback and get to better teaching and learning outcomes.

Student feedback can help you make your teaching more engaging (Faust & Paulson, 1998) and more timely (Gormally et al., 2014). Students are often happy to share their thoughts, especially when they can provide feedback anonymously (Jasieński, 2014). When you ask students to share their perspective, you empower them to be active participants in their own learning. Feedback can also help you shape your course in real-time to better suit your students’ needs (Laici & Pentucci, 2019). Consider collecting student feedback at regular intervals throughout the term.

Tools to Collect Student Feedback

MIT Sloan Technology Services recommends these tools for collecting student feedback:

Poll Everywhere

Poll Everywhere offers a quick and engaging way to take the pulse of your classroom. Students use their phones or laptops to respond to questions you pose during class. Fun fact: Poll Everywhere was co-founded by an MIT Sloan student (now alum).

What you can do with it:

  • Ask quick questions to see if students understand the material
  • Create word clouds of student responses
  • Get anonymous feedback on challenging topics
  • Show results instantly to spark class discussion

Example: Ask “Before we discuss as a class, which position do you lean toward?” Then watch the responses appear in real-time.

Learn how to create a poll in Poll Everywhere.

Qualtrics

Qualtrics provides robust survey capabilities for detailed course feedback and analysis.

What you can do with it:

  • Create surveys with different types of questions:
    • Rating scales (1-5 stars)
    • Multiple choice
    • Open-ended responses
    • Ranking questions
  • See your results in clear charts and graphs
  • Track changes in student responses over time

Example: Send a mid-semester survey asking students about the pace of the course, assignment clarity, and what they’d like to see more of.

Learn how to create a Qualtrics survey.

References

Faust, J. L., & Paulson, D. R. (1998). Active learning in the college classroom. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 9(2), 3–24. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ595306

Gormally, C., Evans, M., & Brickman, P. (2014). Feedback about teaching in Higher Ed: Neglected opportunities to promote change. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 13(2), 187–199. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.13-12-0235

Laici, C., & Pentucci, M. (n.d.). Feedback with technologies in higher education: a systematic review. Form@Re, 19(3), 6–25. https://doi.org/10.13128/form-7698

Jasieński, M. (2014). Features of an e-learning environment which promote critical and creative thinking: Choice, feedback, anonymity, and assessment. International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning, 24(3/4), 237–251. https://doi.org/10.1504/ijceell.2014.063097

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