A new student learning experience survey model: the Course Experience surveys

SFU instructors will be getting a clearer picture of their students’ course experiences this Fall thanks to the university’s new Course Experience Survey program.

The Course Experience (CE) surveys, which replace the Student Experience of Teaching and Courses program (SETC), collect feedback from students on their experiences of SFU courses. The new survey program situates students in their learning experiences rather than asking them to evaluate teaching skills and course design—a concern with the former program.

“Our goal is to help instructors gather more meaningful, better-quality feedback. This new program focuses on asking students to report on their course experiences, and not to make judgements,” says Kiran Bisra, Learning Experiences Assessment and Planning (LEAP) director.

For example, the new CE survey includes questions grounded in personal experience, such as “How often did you understand the instructor’s explanations of concepts?” 

The questions, adds Bisra, also better reflect what students care about.

“Some of the feedback we heard from students during our consultation was that they didn’t understand what they were being asked about or how it fit into their experience. The new questions better target the aspects of a course experience that students told us were important to them such as course workload or instructor communication.”

LEAP has also introduced a survey purpose statement to improve clarity around how the results can be used.

“Including the student voice in teaching assessment is obviously hugely important. Now that we have a clear definition of the Course Experience surveys’ purpose, individual instructors, departments and the institution can better understand how and when to use this feedback to enhance learning and teaching across SFU,” said Vice-Provost for Learning and Teaching Elizabeth Elle.   

As well, the question framework has been redesigned to offer greater flexibilty and better alignment with how SFU units are organized.

The new common core question set was developed closely with students and instructors as part of a one-year research project conducted by LEAP.

If you would like support developing your CE survey questions please contact LEAP here.

More information

Recommendations of the SETC Improvement Project 2022