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ictenglish - [ICTs in English] ICTs in English Weekly update - Collecting feedback from students

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[ICTs in English] ICTs in English Weekly update - Collecting feedback from students


Chronological Thread 
  • From: Hamish Chalmers <hchalmers AT ashs.school.nz>
  • To: ictenglish AT lists.tki.org.nz
  • Subject: [ICTs in English] ICTs in English Weekly update - Collecting feedback from students
  • Date: Tue, 15 May 2012 16:40:51 +1200

Hi everyone,

Perhaps at this time of year you might be looking for some structured feedback from students on how their learning has been in a particular unit or what their perceptions might be of something you’ve tried in class. Exit cards, a quick thumbs up or down and other similar methods are really good for quick feedback but you might be looking for something that gives a bit more specificity and allows you to easily compare and manipulate data.

Well, in case you haven’t heard of it already or used it yourself, check out google forms! With google forms you can construct a survey in moments (or more like 20-30 minutes for a really good one) to collect information from students. A link to this form can then be sent to students where they are presented with a nice-looking form to fill out on their browser of choice. Multi-choice answers, yes/no, rate from 1-5, drop-downs, written answers and more are all at your fingertips (or mouse clicks even) when creating a google form.

And if that wasn’t enough, you then have access to all the answers in a handy spreadsheet! From there you can re-order columns, graph results and do whatever other fancy equations and filtering you enjoy doing with spreadsheets. Seriously though, it’s a fairly awesome tool for collecting feedback from students and can work really nicely for both qualitative and quantitative data collection. Collecting the data is the easy part of course, the big question is: what will you do with it and how will it change your practice?

For the generally less silly and possibly more informative google help page on google forms, go here. It would be great to hear from some others about efficient and easy data collection, evaluation and subsequent decisions on a departmental and individual teacher level. Acting on student feedback effectively in a way that raises achievement is always a challenge! These kinds of tools can also be excellent for collecting data at various points in a teaching inquiry.

There’s been lots of activity on the list this week around computer games in education. Instead of giving links to partial individual threads, here’s the link to the archive page where you’ll be able to access all the posts. As I consider the imminent release of Diablo III this evening and the fact that I’ll need sleep so I can operate with some level of coherence at work tomorrow, I’m reminded of the importance of continuing to inform people of exactly what the debate over computer games and education needs to centre around - it’s not about whether or not they’re beneficial or morally and physically detrimental, it’s more about:
1) identifying the pros and cons of various usages, then
2) designing awesome courses and learning activities that harness the pros for teaching and learning,
while 3) helping students manage the cons, just as they’ll need to on their own when they’re adults.
Well, that’s my seven cents at least.

Have a great week, and don’t stay up too late playing games... or reading books.

Hamish Chalmers
Facilitator: ICTs in English
http://englishonline.tki.org.nz/



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