Using index cards to get feedback from all students

I do my best to find out what students are thinking and learning in my class. I use iClicker questions every period, I ask students to share ideas with the class, and I am always open for questions. Still, in most classes, I don’t hear from most of my students (I have about 55 students present in each section on a given day).

One solution I love to use is to let them write anonymous feedback on an index card at the end of class. Yesterday my prompt was: “Tell me one thing you learned today and one thing you are confused about.” I receive about 100 index cards (over 2 sections) – which takes about 10 minutes to read. It turned out that many (many!) of my students are confused about SNPs, markers, loci and genes and they are confused about how to read Manhattan plots. So good to know! I’ll spend the first 10 min of class tomorrow on these topics! So happy I found out now, and not next week at the midterm exam!