Finally! Some results are in...
Sorry it took so long, but I was trying to wait out my students to see the results of two polls that I gave them through Survey Monkey. Here is what I found: the surveys were really easy to put together and I really liked that I could adjust the notifications from SurveyMonkey so that I my phone wasn't blowing up with notifications. Now that the surveys are complete, though, I'm just not sure what to do with the results! I suppose this is the real consideration of using technology...to what end? My plan is to take the data and bring it back to the students and see if it is helpful to them. I am also planning to ask them (today!) if they have suggestions for surveys. My experience has definitely taught me that if the ideas come from the students, they are far more likely to participate.A bit about the two surveys: I had them available for students for two weeks. They were not required to participate and the system is set up so that only one computer can respond, but a student could easily submit multiple responses from separate devices. This seems to be a glitch in the matrix with SurveyMonkey, but I'm trying to see if there is a way around it.
Both of these questions are ones I typically ask students during the first few weeks of school, but I do it through a discussion in class. When I brought the results of the surveys back to the classes, the discussions were far less dynamic than in previous years. Perhaps this was because of the survey or it may just have been a result of the students.
Feedback is ALWAYS helpful!!
Are you a reader who writes OR a writer who reads?
Total Votes: 41
How Do You Find New Books?
Total Votes: 19
Another nice blog Amy ! As I was looking over your survey questions I just had a quick question myself. For the first survey question, can you share with me the difference between a "reader who writes" and a "writer who reads?" I found this survey question very intriguing and wanted to better understand the meaning of it. Also, I thought that it was interesting with the survey results that in the first question you had about 40 students respond and in the second survey had less than 20. Looking forward to another blog!
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ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this with us. You mentioned a problem that one student can respond several times with different devices. I am not sure whether Survey Monkey has some solutions, but it reminds me a lecture few years ago the lecturer shared how he handled these kinds of problems. What he did was to see how long they took to finished the survey, if it is too short then others, he would recognize it as an invalid answer. I think Survey Monkey had these log data.
The other interesting thing in your blog is students' responses in class after they were exposed to this survey. It is possible because these two questions are not new to them, for example, it's like they already knew the end then start to watch the movie. Additionally, does this survey give students who are not active in class a chance to express their idea? I think it is. What do you think?
Brianna--The question came from a discussion a few years back that a colleague posed to the English department at my school. We talked about how most people will either define themselves as readers or as writers, but that the two are fundamentally connected. Since that conversation, I have started my classes with this question to get them to think about who they are as readers and writers and to see that these two go hand-in-hand!
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