CRLT staff provide hundreds of Midterm Student Feedback sessions for U-M instructors every year. You can learn more about the process or request a consulation on this page. In this guest blog, LSA Associate Dean Phil Deloria discusses the value of these sessions even for very experienced teachers.

If you're teaching this term, I encourage you to contact CRLT soon to schedule a Midterm Student Feedback session for your course. I want to emphasize that these consultations are:

• Wholly confidential, between yourself and the CRLT staff member only, with no communication to your department. They are meant only to inform your own teaching.  
• Formative, not summative. They offer you an opportunity to improve upon a course while it is still underway.
• Appreciated by students. Often, students experience the midterm evaluations as a sign that you are committed to hearing them and to thinking self-critically about your teaching (in the same way that we often ask our students to be self-critical about their experience with the material we are teaching them!).
• Conducted efficiently and effectively. Having a midterm feedback session does not require giving up a significant amount of classroom time.
• Consistently, year after year, the feature of the LSA Teaching Academy that receives the highest marks from new faculty for its usefulness in improving teaching.  

It's not always easy to let someone else into your classroom, but the rewards are substantial. I have been teaching since 1994, and I think I do a pretty good job. But I have never failed to learn from a midterm evaluation. Indeed, many of our most distinguished teachers have already scheduled their feedback sessions for this fall. I urge you to do the same.

Philip J. Deloria
LSA Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Collegiate Professor of History and American Culture 

With the beginning of the semester just around the corner, many instructors are strategizing about how best to start productive classroom conversations. Students who speak even briefly at the beginning of a class meeting are more likely to participate in discussions going forward, and a well-chosen icebreaker can help everyone join in. As quick, low-stakes, and often fun activities that involve students at the beginning of a session, icebreakers can be a good way to learn about who's in the classroom, reduce anxiety, and engage all students in thinking together about course content.  

For some ideas of potential icebreakers, see this list of icebreaker activities from Lansing Community College. CRLT also recently polled our Graduate Student Instructional Consultants (GSICs) to gather a list of their favorites. Here are some good ideas we received when we asked the GSICs to "tweet" us a particularly effective icebreaker they have used, seen, or heard about:

As winter term wraps up, many U-M teachers are thinking ahead to their spring and summer courses. When teaching in a short semester with a limited number of class sessions, it's especially important to make good use of the first day. How can you use an initial meeting to do more than review the syllabus and begin to learn students' names?

CRLT provides many resources to help you quickly establish a productive learning environment in your courses. This page provides an overview of resources related to goals you might have for the first day, from building rapport among students to getting them engaged with the course material. You can also click on the links below for great ideas about:

• syllabus design
• effective ice breakers
• productive discussion questions
• fostering an inclusive learning environment
• choosing your technology

As always, CRLT staff are available to consult with individual instructors about effective teaching strategies before, during, or after your course. 

Our thoughts and best wishes go out to everyone affected by the tragic events at the Boston Marathon. We are aware that particular teaching challenges can arise in the wake of such shared trauma, and our website includes resources that were developed by CRLT to support instructors facing such challenges.  Follow this link to find a range of guidelines for discussing difficult topics with students. Especially relevant items include the guidelines for teaching in the aftermath of the September 11th tragedies. Key suggestions on that page for productively discussing such events include:

• Consider supportive ways to open and close such a discussion
• Create a framework for the discussion, using specific questions to guide student contributions
• Allow everyone a chance to talk, but don't force students to participate
• Where possible, explore links to the content of your course or discipline

Other helpful resources in the wake of the Boston events include this article on student perceptions of more and less helpful faculty responses to public violence and tragedy. The authors, Therese A. Huston, and Michele DiPietro, discuss their findings that even a simple, brief recognition of the occurrence--and an acknowledgment that students may be experiencing distress--can make a big difference. Students appreciate their teachers' acknowledging public tragedies, even in courses where the material does not seem relevant to the events. 

As always, CRLT consultants are also available to consult with individual instructors about effective ways to respond to such events. In the face of such shocking violence, we at CRLT feel fortunate to witness the tremendous good accomplished by U-M teachers every day.