2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This evidence-based practice full paper describes the results of a pilot of the [anonymized] Student Opinion Survey, a tool designed to aid in the development of a healthy STEM educational ecosystem for students, faculty, and staff at a majority-minority Hispanic-Serving Institution. An important part of creating a healthy educational ecosystem is our ability to obtain meaningful feedback from students about their experiences in STEM classrooms. However, current institutional course feedback surveys do not capture many aspects of learning that are important for constructing inclusive classroom spaces. Additionally, significant research has found problems with student bias in course feedback surveys.

The [anonymized] team has proposed and is piloting an alternative process to provide student feedback to instructors. The [anonymized] Student Opinion Survey contains three components: a Demographic Survey, a Values Survey, and an Experiences Survey. The Demographic Survey includes items about student identity, such as race/ethnicity and gender, as well as material circumstances, such as living and commuting situation and household income level. The Values and Experiences Surveys have been developed based on the [anonymized] project’s conceptualization of three aspects of a healthy educational ecosystem: classroom climate (e.g., students’ sense of belonging), structure (e.g., assessment methods), and vibrancy (e.g., excitement and engagement). The Values Survey measures students’ views on the importance of each aspect at the start of the semester; these results, along with those of the Demographics Survey, are provided to instructors to support their course planning and execution in ways that support the students enrolled. The Experiences Survey then measures students’ perception of the enactment of these same aspects at the end of the semester. Reports provided to instructors on each of their classes at the end of the semester will provide useful feedback on which to reflect and design intentional changes for future courses.

In this paper, we detail results from a pilot administration of the Student Opinion Survey, including confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of our proposed constructs of climate, structure, and vibrancy, and initial survey results. We seek to demonstrate how the unique set of measures in this survey – ecosystem health and student identity as well as material demographics – give us important insights into students’ lives so that we can best meet them “where they are” in instructional settings, creating equitable classroom environments. We argue that meaningful course feedback is critical for higher education institutions pursuing equitable educational outcomes, particularly if they aim to serve their marginalized students.

Keywords: Factor analysis, Reflective practice, Equity, Survey