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Talk About Your Plenty, Talk About Your Ills
Notes on a good, old-fashioned insoluble educational quandary.
In recognition of the relieving new world that we find ourselves in, I am taking a pause in my political writing. At some point, continuing to screech while positive things are finally happening starts to sound…shrill. This one is about something completely different. Thankfully.
This piece is about a problem that I think about all of the time. It is a problem that I deal with every year in every class that I teach. It is a good problem. Let me describe it to you.
Every year, in the middle of the first marking period, I administer my students a (voluntary, anonymous) survey about their experience in my class. It’s not a long survey, but it is useful for me (and hopefully for them, too). It’s also nothing special: There are some anonymized demographic items (the class and period that the students are in) to help with data analysis. This is followed by a series of temperature-taking, Likert-type items about classroom culture and experience. Finally, there are three free-response, qualitative items: What structures are most useful? What structures are least useful? If you could make one change to the class, what would it be? And here is where the problem lies.
Here are this year’s responses for one of my courses. The link takes you to the “Feedback Report” that I write after grouping submissions. Scroll past the Likert-type averages and take a look at the qualitative responses. Do you see the issue? You probably do. But let me make sure everyone does. Here’s are the first ten (post-sort) responses to the first qualitative question:
Q: What structures do you find to be most useful for you as a student in this class?
Infodocs & Discussions
infodocs and infodoc small group discussions
I feel like the infodocs are really useful as they are very informative and helpful with learning. They teach everything nicely.
The infodocs help me to stay on task and manage my time. The albert.ios help me review the concepts taught in class and provides me with an idea of what I need to revise again.
I really like taking notes on the videos at home then coming to class for further discussion.
Group discussions at the beginning of the class…