As we do the difficult work of transitioning back in person amidst an ongoing pandemic, onboarding many new team members, and prioritizing the health and safety of those in our care, the TAP program will be temporarily paused this semester.
Please review the following Teaching Toolbox for information on how to solicit formative feedback from your students: Teaching Toolbox: Soliciting Student Feedback (or How to TAP Your Own Class)-September 24, 2020
Teaching Analysis Polls (TAPs) are a mid-semester evaluation technique that provides instructors with rich qualitative feedback from their students regarding the learning environment in a course. Feedback obtained from a TAP can be used for focused reflections on one’s teaching to enhance classroom interactions, student learning, and teaching strategies. Most importantly, instructors receive feedback at the mid-point of the semester, when they can meaningfully include students in the feedback loop.
Request a TAP consultation
Instructors can request TAPs during the first two weeks of every semester or until filled. TAPs are then conducted between the sixth and tenth weeks. This timing ensures that students are able to provide meaningful feedback and that instructors have ample time to effectively act upon this feedback before the end of the semester. The number of TAP requests that the CFI can accommodate depends on the generosity and availability of our volunteer TAP consultants.
The TAP Consultation Process
- The TAP process takes about 30-45 minutes, depending on the class size, followed by an individual debrief with a CFI consultant at a later date/time.
- On the day of the TAP, after the instructor leaves the room, the CFI consultant introduces the TAP process to the students.
- Students work in small groups to answer the TAP questions (e.g., what is helping your learning in this course?) and then post their responses.
- The CFI consultant then discusses the results with the whole class, noting points of consensus as well as disagreement.
- After the TAP, the CFI consultant prepares an anonymized report of the results to share with the instructor.
- Finally, the CFI consultant meets with the instructor to review the results and brainstorm future courses of action (30-60 minutes).
Questions about the TAP process? Email cfi@jmu.edu.
Current TAP (Teaching Analysis Polls) Consultants
TAP consultants are volunteers selected from among JMU instructional faculty. They wish to enrich the professional development landscape for other faculty, value the role of formative assessment in the learning environment, and possess an interest in university faculty development. These volunteers engage in a training/mentoring, and then consult with several courses per semester, in addition to their own teaching schedules.
