At this school and my last one there is a formal process for students to voice their opinions/concerns/suggestions through a course evaluation form. At both schools I have noticed that not enough students take this process as seriously as we want them to. The forms are well-intentioned and detailed in their questions, but they are all Likert-scale questions (with some blank space for expanding answers) and they are hand written forms. I suspect that many students are self-conscious about their handwriting being identified. I think that one of the results of this is that the only handwritten extensions we tend to see are from students who are happy and want to share nice words in depth (we love it when we see these!) or when they are especially unhappy and want to share unkind words in depth (happily, these are much less common.) However, I always walk away feeling that these could be better and more useful. I would love to have a process where these are done online anonymously as I suspect that we will get more willingness to expand on answers. I also want questions that are aimed a little more directly at the concerns of our math classrooms rather than well meaning general feedback forms.
I am convinced that the process is a meaningful one. Letting our students know that their voices and opinions matter is a powerful thing. Letting them know that the adults who have been evaluating them need to hear back on how we are doing levels the playing field (at least a little bit) and this tells our students that they can be part of an honest feedback loop where we can grow based on their experiences/opinions/successes/failures. But I also know that the process can be better than the one we have.
I know I have read a few posts along these lines and I am off to the MTBoS search engine this morning to see what I can find. I would love to hear from anyone reading this about their successes, and failures, in elucidating meaningful feedback from their students.
As always, feel free to drop a comment here or pick up the conversation over on twitter where I remain @mrdardy
Thanks in advance for any wisdom.
I have used multiple ways, some more effect then others. I use http://www.socrative.com to do exit tickets, simple, easy and you can change them each day, or keep it the same. I also use google forms for the end of the week review. Asking them to reflect on the week, what they learned, what they need to work on. Things they did well, things they need to improve upon. Just basic ideas. I went to a conference and there was a speaker that said he had students write a page over the weekend that was anything they wanted to. At first he said that it started out as a couple sentences, but if you put in the time to write back to them and ask questions, then after a month or so they start to really reflect.