Practical Tips for TEDS Surveys in the online teaching environment

If you haven’t decided yet about whether or not to order a TEDS survey this semester, check out the post on TEDS in Turbulent Times

Before we go on to tips about surveying successfully, it’s important to remind you that “surveys are not the only fruit” – you don’t have to wait until an end-of-session TEDS survey to seek their feedback. Some ideas for obtaining early feedback are listed at the end of this post.

• If you would like to order a TEDS survey, consider including a set of optional items relevant to your students’ experience in this session.
  • For a Learner Experience of Unit (LEU) survey, suitable groups from the LEU Item Bank might be:
    • IBU_01 – Inclusion and Belonging 02;
    • ITU_01 or ITU_02 – Integrated Technology 1 or 2;
    • ITU_04 – Online Delivery; and
    • MEU_05 – Online Engagement.
  • For a Learner Experience of Teaching (LET) survey, suitable item groups might be:
    • GP3 – Online Teaching;
    • GP11 – Inclusive Practice; and
    • GP12 – Engaging Students.

You may also select your own group of individual items from the LET Item Bank.

• Order your survey via the TEDS website. Note that a university-wide survey will be going out to students in Week 10, so it would be good to time your survey to open in Week 11 or 12.
• Let your students know now that you will also be conducting a formal TEDS survey later in the session and that you value their feedback on your unit/teaching. Explain, (providing examples if possible, how you use student feedback to make changes and improvements in your unit/teaching. You could do this in a recorded lecture or tutorial, and/or via an iLearn Announcement or Forum post.
• At the same time, it would be good to also let them know that a University-wide survey of students will be carried out in Week 10. Explain that this survey will seek their views on their overall experience of the University’s COVID-19 response, but that your survey will ask them specific questions about their experience with respect to your unit/teaching. 
• When your survey opens, you will receive an email notifying you of this, and links to resources to assist you in promoting the survey and tracking the responses. These resources are currently being updated to take into account the move to online teaching, and will also be made available via the TEDS website.
• A link to the survey will appear in your students’ iLearn home page. Let your students know about the survey and encourage them to complete it. Remind them that you value their constructive, honest feedback about their experience of your unit/teaching, especially given the disruptive events of this session.
  • If you are delivering classes online via ECHO360 or Zoom, remind them during the class. You might even want to give them time to complete it during the class, as recommended for face-to-face classes. 
  • Post a message (via text at the top of your iLearn unit or an Announcement) on iLearn alerting students to the availability of the survey, and encouraging them to respond.
  • Add a note about the survey to class or group discussion forums in iLearn.
  • Track the survey’s progress via the iLearn TEDS Survey Dashboard or TEDS Survey Inquiry Screen and use this information to continue to urge students to complete the survey.

If you have decided to do a TEDS survey, it’s important to remember that formal surveys are not your only option for gathering student feedback. There are other options that you can take up right now to check in on your students, seek feedback from them about their experience so far with any changes you’ve made to your unit and/or teaching, and find out if they need further information or support. These include:

• Setting up an iLearn forum specifically for their feedback
• Using interactive polls, quizzes etc to ask them about their experience so far
• Emailing students via iLearn Insights (you may wish to target different messages to different groups of students, depending on their level of engagement)
• Invite students to email you with their feedback (via iLearn dialogue would be best)

Whichever of these you choose, it’s important to let the students know that you’d like to hear from them about how they’re experiencing the changes to your unit and/or teaching. Explain that this is particularly important at this time, when the transition to online delivery has been fast-tracked due to the almost daily changes in the COVID-19 situation. You might also remind them of the University’s correspondence with them, which includes links to both learning and personal support services.