The last time I deeply interrogated and shared my student evaluations was a very different time in history. Re-reading Reflecting on Research Methods (Pre- and Mid-Pandemic) from June 2021, the resilience and deep commitment to my students moves my heart with compassion. Oh that was so tough. Anyway, of the last five years, I have taught three. Academic year 2022/23 I missed because I traded teaching for heavy service commitments releases in Term 1 (including helping with Workday transitions), and Term 2 I was on leave in Ontario ministering to my Gran (who raised me) as she was very ill and ultimately died, leaving me raw and questioning my place in the world. This past year, 2025/26, I’ve been on sabbatical (see Tales of a Sabbatical for a small taste of what I’ve been doing!). As I look ahead to 2026/27, it is time to revisit this practice of sharing my reflections on student evaluations. Please see my Approach to Analyzing Qualitative Student Evals Data 2026 and as well as Student Evaluations of Teaching for quantitative analyses, and my Courses page for all my syllabi.
Thank you to every student who took the time to share feedback over the years.
What do students think I should keep doing in each course, and what changes might I consider making this year? (What do I have capacity for? What is within my control?)
I am heartened that overall, student comments indicate my teaching efforts are received positively. What follows is the summary looking especially at my most recent offering (2024 Term 1), but results align with 2023 Term 1 except where noted. Students recognize the care and compassion, enthusiasm, and strong course organization I bring to them and to our classroom experiences. Without my prompting, Microsoft Copilot identified these themes as highly prominent, and they are sync with what I know to be my signature strengths. (Students began identifying these years ago, and so I have intentionally cultivated them.)
Students said things like “she genuinely cares about her students,” they recognize that I aim for a class where “everyone feels welcome and supported,” and appreciate the ways I build flexibility to accommodate different students (e.g., “the pathway option is very considerate.”) Students also note that I “bring high energy in the morning” and “inject excitement and passion into a topic that could easily be banal,” and that “everything was done with extreme attention to detail.”
Students also reported authentic research experience and learning through application rather than memorization as key strengths of this course. I might have downplayed these, actually, had Microsoft Copilot not named them. I sometimes take for granted just how rich the learning experience is that is true across all sections of the course.
Students said: “conducting our own experiment was meaningful” and “prepares [students] for practical aspects of conducting research” resulting in “very useful transferable skills.”
The richness of that research project also came through, to my surprise, in last summer’s (non-AI) Reflexive Thematic Analysis of Researcher Identity Integration papers (see Improving University Teaching Conference 2025; the paper is currently under review), so there’s clearly more to appreciate there. The research project is one way students learn through application. Another is the “Article Application Tests”, which I created as part of my 2023 course renewal. I replaced all multiple choice tests with written answers. Students are given a hard copy of a journal article, and asked to find and discuss examples of key concepts from the course as they appear in that journal article. We practice this skill in class with practice tests (more on this later!), including discussing answers in small groups and as a whole class. Students report the tests “rewarded understanding rather than memorizing” and are “helpful in learning how to apply learning.” Also notable: there’s a small subset of students finding them challenging, especially with the short time period.
What I have never seen before 2023 were comments like this: “strong decolonial attitudes,” “helped us challenge norms in the field,” “broad variety of perspectives,” and “diversity makes better psychology.” Students named and identified as a strength my commitments to inclusion, diverse perspectives, and challenging traditional assumptions in psychology. Diversity and Indigenous perspectives, dabbling in qualitative methodologies, and examining the role of (their) positionality in research were major part of my 2023 course renewal, so this is exciting to see students mention these aspects. Microsoft Copilot helpfully noted, “a small minority expressed the opposite view and wanted less emphasis on these topics, but these comments were substantially outnumbered by positive remarks.”
What to consider changing? Here’s the issue I’m going to commit to focusing on addressing this coming year: more explicit guidance for exams. Students asked for “clearer expectations for exams” including “how answers should be structured” and “what to expect“. Here’s where Microsoft Copilot has really helped me face facts… because I feel like I already do this! Apart from giving the test in advance (which is not going to happen lest it remove all measure of learning), I have struggled to think of ways to seriously and realistically give students more direction. We already go through practice tests in class, and I give multiple sets of model questions to practice with… but no full answer keys or direct feedback. So I’m going to try this out: I’m going to critically examine my previous year’s midterms and final exams including answer keys, and decide whether (or what parts) I can actually just give those away. Then develop new ones from scratch. My worry is this: that students will think there is one right answer and one best way to answer the questions, and seek to copy them. But if this feedback is coming out clearly as a top priority after two years of data, I feel like it’s time to try. As identified by Microsoft Copilot, “the consistent issue does not seem to be: ‘the assessments are unfair.’ Rather ‘I don’t always know what excellent performance looks like.” Ok. Let’s figure this out.
Additional suggestions/requests/issues:
- Lecture recordings. This is a tough one, and came up in 2023 as well. I hear key the benefits: test review and access when sick. These are reasons why I offer lecture recordings in PSYC 218–missing a class can have cascading implications for comprehension, and many students need to review these lessons for understanding of nuanced statistical concepts. But in 217 we get into some sensitive and sometimes personal material (e.g., with respect to diversity and ethics). We also have a lot of discussions — it’s not just me talking (even though I’m the only one who has a microphone) — and missing class because there’s a recording is a really problematic issue that risks learning. I’m not feeling comfortable with this trade-off. What else can I offer? Facilitating a notetaker system? Ideas welcome.
- More APA-style paper-writing support. I’ll take this back to the whole team (it’s a common assignment across all sections) and see what else we can offer together. I’ll also see where else I can offer tips in the course. Again I feel like we already do a lot. So I wonder what specifically students mean when they say they want more support. Follow-up questions would be so helpful!
- Better deadline communication within the lab modules in Canvas. That’s fair. There are lots of small deadlines embedded within the common lab modules (i.e., I don’t make them) that I try to track, but don’t even have on my radar sometimes. My Weekly Announcement is critical though, and should contain all deadlines. If students skip it, they’re at risk of missing things.
- Navigating groupwork challenges. “Not a course-wide concern, but several students raised” issues with groupwork, such as “different goals among group members,” feeling “reliant on others” who may contribute unequally, difficulty coordinating schedules, and disliking random group assignment. These are the issues that crop up in a few groups each year, in every section of this course (though wasn’t a theme in 2023 feedback). I can help mediate group issues, but only if students come to me as soon as possible. How best to encourage that compassionately? An early check-in with all 32 groups seems impossible… or is it? If limited to 10 minutes on zoom, that’s about 5.5 hours (plus breaks because yikes!). Hmm. Let me think on that.
Interestingly, analysis from my 2023 students identified a desire for more explicit alignment between the textbook material and what we covered in class, as well as improved “lecture structure” and offering slides before class. None of these came up in 2024 as areas for improvement. Although I didn’t write about it, this contrast reminds me that I did deliberately prioritize integration of textbook material and overall tightening my class periods for 2024’s offering. Evidently, I successfully addressed these issues.
Please see Evaluating Research Methods Course Redesign: Student Feedback. for the rest of this post, answering the course redesign questions.