Faculty Development at Edmonds Community College
SGID: Small Group Instructional Diagnosis
To request or facilitate an SGID, email faculty.development@edcc.edu
What is an SGID?
It is a small-group, structured interview usually offered midway through a term to:
- Deepen your relationship and communication with your students
- Learn about what really works and doesn’t work for your students
This process uses open-ended questions that help students create constructive feedback in small groups that are shared in a full class discussion that identifies consensus ideas. It is facilitated by a teaching colleague not associated with the class.
What is the interview process?
The four steps include:
- The SGID facilitator conducts a class interview after he/she is introduced by the instructor as someone who is there at his or her request to gather feedback about the course. After the instructor leaves the room, the facilitator divides the class into small groups. The groups have 5-7 minutes to respond to questions like these:
- What do you like about this course?
- What do you think needs improvement?
- What specific suggestions do you have for changing the course?
- A spokesperson from each group reports out by writing on the board their group response under a column for each question.
- The facilitator checks for consensus of the whole class and the responses are either eliminated or rewritten to achieve consensus.
- A follow-up meeting between the instructor and the facilitator is conducted to review the feedback and discuss strategies for responding.
It usually takes 25-35 minutes depending on the class size.
When Should You Consider an SGID?
Whenever you want to gather input about your current teaching practices or about a new technique/activity that you've implemented.
In the past, faculty have conducted SGIDs when:
- Trying something new in class, to gauge the impact on students;
- Seeking improvement, but uncertain how or where to focus attention in a class;
- Wanting student opinions about the course in general or specific classroom issues (grading, the mid -term, class policies, other students' conduct, etc.);
- Wanting more feedback than the standardized student evaluation provides; and when
- Seeking to increase student involvement.
Why should I do this?
SGIDs provide richer student input than the written comments in student evaluations. In classes where only the same few students publicly share information, the small group process can allow the quiet ones to air their concerns. Often they all learn that events or issues are interpreted differently. The group has to agree on a response to the teacher by consensus. The anonymity of students is preserved. This is a reflective process and provides qualitative information that the 5th and 7th week evaluations cannot provide.
Who are the trained facilitators?
A group of approximately 25 faculty members at Edmonds Community College who have received training and want to help — not administrators.
To whom does the facilitator report?
To you — The facilitators share the students' comments only with you. They do not report to adiministrators unless you've made arrangements and given permission.
