Course Representatives
One way to monitor your effectiveness as a teacher is to ask a student to serve as a student representative or ombuds(wo)man. The representative’s role is to communicate student concerns and feedback anonymously to you.
The student you ask to play this role should be someone you consider trustworthy who is respected by classmates (one option is to ask the class to choose their own representative.) Explain that the representative’s responsibility will be strictly to synthesize and share students’ concerns anonymously, but that he or she is free to decline the responsibility. The role should be strictly voluntary.
When you have chosen your course representative, let other students know that you welcome their feedback, which they can convey to you directly or channel to their representative, who will share it anonymously with you.
You can then meet or correspond periodically with the course representative to collect student feedback.
In larger classes, you might want to designate a team of student representatives who can synthesize the experiences of students in different recitation sections in their feedback to you.
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