EvCC earns grant to get real-time student feedback

Press Release

Release Date: August 25, 2016

Contact: Heather Bennett, Executive Director Institutional Effectiveness and Resource Development, 425-388-9253; hbennett@everettcc.edu

EvCC earns grant to get real-time student feedback

Photo: Everett Community College Associate Dean for Teaching and Learning Peg Balachowski.

EVERETT, Wash. – Everett Community College Associate Dean for Teaching and Learning Peg Balachowski has received a grant from the IDEA Foundation to test a way to provide faculty with weekly feedback. 

She was awarded $8,734 to pilot test an online model that would anonymously collect information from students about their instructor’s teaching and progress toward achieving the expected learning outcomes for the class. 

“I am very excited about the potential of this project,” Balachowski said. “We are hopeful that this could provide a tool to help faculty respond in positive ways to student feedback, even as the course is being taught.”

Titled “Using Formative Feedback to Improve Learning Outcomes,” the project’s goal is for instructors to use online student feedback to make adjustments by using student responses to tailor their strategies, their classroom activities and their teaching methods.

The project will get underway with six EvCC faculty members during winter quarter 2017.

EvCC was one of only six colleges selected for funding among the 126 schools that applied and the only two-year school to receive an impact grant from the Kansas-based IDEA (Improving Learning in Higher Education) Foundation.

Balachowski leads EvCC’s Center for Transformative Teaching. For more information about the center’s work, see EverettCC.edu/CTT.