An interim evaluation is a very useful tool for improving your teaching. Instead of waiting until the end of the semester to get students’ feedback, you can respond to comments and criticisms right away. That does not mean that you have to throw your existing plan overboard. Small modifications can also improve the learning process. This shows that you are taking your students seriously and often gives a big boost to their overall satisfaction. It’s also a way to prevent unexplained absences. An interim evaluation lets you check, for example, whether the amount of preparation and the learning level are appropriate and whether students are under- or over-challenged. The evaluation should cover both the learning progress as well as the learning process.

You can conduct the interim evaluation either in writing or orally, and participation can be voluntary, obligatory, or somewhere in between. Read more advice about how to phrase questions and how to conduct evaluations in the “Feedback Method Bar” (link, in German) at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

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Version April 2017. Unless otherwise stated, this content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International licence.