Jan 24 2007
Questionaires and Feedback from Students….How Do You Find the Truth?
The more I look at the questionnaires the more I worry and think about the science of collecting data from students is incredibly difficult. Designing questions that don’t lead a student one way and are easily understood is the initial hurdle. But beyond this it is very difficult to explain and set the environment to be one that allows the students to understand that their teacher as researcher does not want them to be ‘nice’ but you want them to be truthful and explain exactly how and what they think about an online learning system.
It is evident to some extent that students shall we say try to either second guess what you want or ,without a necessary reason that this is helping within their education (exam results?), do not think through their answers so that they are valid. I had a few answered with put more football on the weblog, which I suppose in some ways is valid but really is only saying that the student hates a particular domain and subject not that learning or motivation has improved due to the use of an online tool.
Tomorrow will see the younger students filling in their questionnaire and I wonder if probably it would have been better to organise a set of focus group interviews rather than this method of questionnaires. Unfortunately I am off on a trip to Microsoft so am not able to be around.
The questionnaires I created are linked here Year1011Questionairre, Year79Questionairre and have been designed to be easy to access, but enabling any student who wishes to answer with comments in fuller open questions.
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