Getting Student Feedback on my Teaching using Google Forms

I am a big believer in using student co-construction to help plan my lessons and as a vehicle for feedback (see my other post). This has proven very valuable however it has not allowed me to access a wide range of opinions from all the students in several classes. I designed a questionnaire using Google forms, with a series of simple questions to gauge the opinions of my students simultaneously from years 8 - 12. The questionnaire was anonymous and I only asked the students to specify their year group. using Google forms was incredibly easy. The form took 5 minutes to make and Google collate the responses for you.

Some of the results are displayed briefly below. I am using Tagxedo.com which is brilliant for turning a large amount of text into a meaningful image.


I was struck by some of the words such as 'unique' and 'different' and it seemed that students valued my attempts to be creative and think outside the box. This made the time put into those kind of activities seem worthwhile.

What are your favourite types of activities in Mr West's lessons?
What struck me from this was the importance and value students placed on the active learning elements of my lessons. I was also struck by how popular my use of YouTube and Twitter is.

This was the most interesting and enlightening question. At first it can be the most difficult type of question to ask but it is always the most rewarding. My students made two contradictory points of note:

1) A preference for a more traditional form of teaching. They would like to see more "boring" activities and for me to "Maybe add more note taking during lessons". Quite a number of students "Would like a bit of old school copying down from the board every now and then."

2) A preference for more role play and active learning. They would like to see me "Try get the children out of their seat's every lesson!" and "maybe to do some more role plays to help us learn "

Clearly these two points are contradictory and reflect students with different learning styles. They also highlight the challenge of teaching; what works well for one does not for another.

Clearly then, doing a Google form and asking your class their opinions will not give you all the answers. But the value of this activity has been high. It has allowed a quieter element of my classes to state a preference for a more old fashioned approach. Don't get me wrong I will not be throwing the baby out with the bath water and getting a new set of board pens for every activity. But I have already started to incorporate elements of more traditional teaching into my classroom, I have made sure today that as part of my teaching I have displayed the key information on the board and allowed the students, if they wish, to copy it down. I will continue to do this and, in doing so, will be better at teaching to the needs of that group.

Using Google forms to find out what is good about my lessons is just a new, more effective, way of doing what I have always done. Listened to the preference of my students and incorporated that preference into my lessons.

It creates engagement and ownership of the learning from my students and it makes my job easier and me better at it.