Judith K. Bernhard, PhD
Professor, School of Early Childhood Studies
Course: CLD 231 – Families in Canadian Context I
Strategy: Mid-semester student survey
Judith Bernhard’s third-year course presented some unique challenges during a time of remote teaching. While half the class had been attending classes at Ryerson for some time, the other half were direct entry students from Ontario colleges that had never taken a university course before.
In person, she could get a sense of how students were doing based casual conversations and their engagement in class. But in the remote classroom, this was more difficult.
Because of this, Judith made a deliberate effort to check in with the students by conducting the Student Check-in survey provided by the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching.
Once she conducted the survey, she provided an email response to the students that provided tips and insights from their peers.
She also used the results of the survey to make some adjustments to the course, such as reducing the number of logs students needed to submit throughout the term.
Unlike other student feedback, which usually comes at the end of the semester, Judith found this approach to benefit her and her students as they both were able to take the information from the survey and improve their experience.