Halfway through the term isn't a great time to change around a bunch of materials or assignments in your course. However, it is a useful moment to evaluate how the course is going, realign to match the goals you set out at the beginning of the term, and determine what you may be able to tweak to make your course work more effectively for you and for your students. This piece suggests actions you can take at midterm to help shape the second half of the course.
Revisit your course plans.
Revisit your Course Facilitation Plan, if you have one. How closely does your day-to-day experience of teaching the course match the goals or intentions you set out with at the beginning of the term? If you didn't specify goals in a course facilitation plan, think back to your expectations of what the facilitation experience would look like before the term started. How closely does your facilitation experience match these expectations?
Analyze your weekly calendar.
How much time would you estimate you’ve spent each week on activities like grading, reading and answering discussion board posts, and meeting with students? Is the balance of time you've spent on each activity in line with what you'd like, or do you feel the time would ideally be allotted differently?
View the analytics in your course, if available.
What kinds of information or activities do students seem to be spending the most time on, and do any of their choices surprise you? These observations can inform approaches to the rest of the term. If a group of students struggled with a topic and you see that they have visited relevant content many times, this might lead you to consider if the content is clearly presented or needs additional scaffolding; if students have not visited relevant content, you may opt to direct students to existing resources. See the Envision pieces Navigating Canvas New Analytics for more on how to access and interpret analytics in Canvas and LMS Analytics: Supporting Your Students With Data for more details on why and how to best approach this kind of information.
Survey students.
Take time to ask students about their impressions of the course's pace, focusing on their perceived level of expertise in the course material thus far. What activities or topics have impacted their learning the most? If they could change one aspect of the course so far, what would it be? This information may help you determine what to emphasize in your facilitation moving forward—for example, some responses may lead you to make announcements that signpost upcoming projects more often, while others may inspire you to reduce the number of announcements you send overall. In addition, research shows midsemester feedback surveys are correlated with improved scores on student evaluations at the end of the term and give students the chance to increase their ownership over the course (Byrne & Donlan, 2020; Overall & Marsh, 1979).
Share your findings.
No matter which of these activities you choose, consider sharing the results of any of your midterm reflections with your students. You might consider mentioning survey feedback that was either popular or contradictory, or sharing plans for facilitation changes such as setting more or fewer office hours for the rest of the term. You might even share some insights from your course analytics, such as which pages or assignments are the most frequently visited in your LMS platform. Looping your students into this information and analysis lets students know what to expect moving forward, but it can also build the impression that the course is something that instructors and students co-construct, building engagement and buy-in from learners (van Leusen, 2013).
References
Byrne, V. L., & Donlan, A. E. (2020). Presenting a validated mid-semester evaluation of college teaching to improve online teaching. Online Learning, 24(2), 94–110.
Overall, J. U., & Marsh, H. W. (1979). Midterm feedback from students: Its relationship to instructional improvement and students’ cognitive and affective outcomes. Journal of Educational Psychology, 71(6), 856–865.
van Leusen, P. (2013, October 21). It's the middle of the semester...So, what do my students really think? Teach Online.