So how was it for you?
These days if you go to any kind of coffee shop or restaurant, or buy something from a retailer on the high street, get an MOT or your tyres done, the waiter, retailer assistant or mechanic hands you a little card. The card usually offers you the chance to win an iPad, a £100 or something similar, with a web link (sometimes an QR Code) and asks you for feedback on what you’ve just done.
Now it is generally accepted that we should be asking our learners how the lesson they are in went. Asking questions such as “what went well?” and “even better if?” allow practitioners to evaluate the effectiveness of what the learners learnt, and how they learnt it.
There are many ways to do this, post it notes are an obvious one, that can then be stuck next to the door on the way out. We have practitioners using tools such as Wallwisher (now known as Padlet) for a similar virtual type activity.
As you really need to be asking for feedback at each lesson, it makes sense to have a variety of ways to collect and collate feedback. The VLE has a number of tools that can be used to collect this learner feedback.
As might be expected a tool like the Feedback block in module is designed to do just that collect and collate feedback. You can create a series of questions, or even a single question. The key is getting the learners to add their feedback and importantly for the practitioner to reflect on the feedback and ensure it feeds into their future planning.
If there is a quiz tool on the VLE then using an open-ended format quiz will work in a similar manner to the concept of a feedback module. Just make sure that it doesn’t mark the quiz and give the students a score!
Usually the data from quizzes and feedback style modules can be exported as a spreadsheet file for further analysis.
You could use a discussion forum, where this works well is if you want group feedback and for the learners to reflect and discuss their feedback, collaborating together to provide that feedback to the practitioner.
One advantage of the VLE for gathering feedback is that it is recorded and is also accessible in the future. Perfect for analysis feedback over a period of time.
I wouldn’t use the VLE every lesson for feedback, there are many ways of gathering learner feedback, however it is one tool that you can and should use.