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


Chronological Thread 
  • From: Maria Persson <mariap AT waikato.ac.nz>
  • To: ictenglish AT lists.tki.org.nz
  • Subject: Re: [ICTs in English] ICTs in English Weekly update - Collecting feedback from students
  • Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 09:41:24 +1200

Thanks Hamish for your sacrifice in playing 'Diablo" - to better inform teaching...

But really - I agree 100% with your final points - thanks.

On the Google Forms note:
Since last year (August 2011) our Student Learning Unit needed to come up with a way to help students in a more specific and informed way.  

We needed permission to view their work and make comments on it as well as find out what was of most concern to them about a piece of writing - where they wanted specific help.  

The form has proven to be really beneficial and with the different question types available to use it has given us some rich data.  This continues to inform us as to student need but also areas where we as tutors can improve our service/teaching.

I tried google forms with staff initially to get a feel for its functionality and to see what the feedback on the spreadsheet would look like.  It is easily embedded into Moodle (what I have done) and can be set as a pop up window so students don't lose the course page!

I love how it provides summaries, graphs in different forms and is easily transformed from a google doc to an 'excel' spreadsheet.  We have used this data to inform 'powers that be' to assist in proposals for further funding as well as our review our pedagogy and insight on trends with students' needs.

I think that the potential for quick assessment is useful and can be very rich - if the questions are well thought through.  Play with it before giving it to student - my one piece of advice. 

Have fun!

On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 4:40 PM, Hamish Chalmers <hchalmers AT ashs.school.nz> wrote:
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/



--

Maria Persson

Senior Tutor - Student Learning

University of Waikato/Faculty of Education

P O Box 3105, Hamilton 3240, NZ

studentlearning





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