Academic Online Poll/Survey Guidelines to Improve Student Learning

Many teachers have begun to use online polling or survey tools in their classroom.  The clicker movement has become transformed into a multitude of  e-polling  tools such as those described in Web 2.0 Survey and Polling Tools.

Some general guidelines for a learning poll in a classroom.

1) Decide on the purpose of the poll.  Is it a pre-assessment, in-progress assessment, or a final assessment?

2) Focus the poll on a single  specific learning concept.  Do not do a poll on all Spanish foods  but on  the subcategory of  breakfast foods.  Avoid sampling polls that cover many different learning concepts.

3) Ask critical essential  material.  Go for the truly important learning , instead of the trivial learning.  It is more important to know what type poetry a poet wrote rather than how many husbands she had.

4) Ask higher level questions  Which of the following  sentences uses an analogy?  or

5) Keep the wording  simple. Avoid negative questions.  Avoid long  questions or statements. Avoid long multi-line possible answers.  Although open-ended questions often allow the students more flexible in how they answer the question, these open-ended answers are hard to analyze for overall class performance.

6) Keep the poll to 10 or fewer questions.  Make it a quick poll to take.

7)  Decide whether to give the poll as homework or in-class.  If done in-class, is it a review of yesterday (or the past few days)?  Is a poll given after  in-class instruction and some practice?  Decide when it  fits in the lesson to give you the best picture of students’ learning?

8) Decide if the poll is anonymous or whether the students identify themselves.  If students identify themselves, then you can keep track of their progress.   If students identify themselves, make sure your poll program can store the data.  Some poll programs have polls that disappear after a certain amount of time. Does the program allow you to manipulate the data such as sorting or ranking?

9) Decide if you will share the class results with the class or whether you will be the only one to look at the data.  If you share the results with the class, does the poll program produce an overall graph with no names or identification of individual students?  For example, the poll may show a graph of how many A,  B, C, and D answers there were for an individual question and  highlight the correct answer.

10)  If you are using the poll for class improvement, do you  provide new strategies for students to overcome the learning gaps shown in the poll? If  you explain the “wrong” answer in the same way that you have previously explained it, then students who are presently confused will still be confused.  Do you have a new different strategy for students to learn the material?  How soon after giving the poll will you give the new strategy? (Research says the sooner, the more effective.)  Do you have students practice the new approach?

11) If at least 20% of the students do poorly (below 80%) on the  poll,  do y0u re-poll students within a few days to see if they have overcome their learning gaps? Can they show that they are proficient?

12) Decide if your next online poll will be this subcategory of the learning goal at a higher learning level, another subcategory of this learning goal, or a new learning goal.  Hopefully, students will see the polls as a logical progression of their learning.

How do you use polls in your class?

My modern language blogs are  now at  http://bit.ly/imprml

I have developed many  Spanish activities that allow students to begin to express themselves and to begin to move toward spontaneous speaking as in a natural conversation at Teacherspayteachers:  http://bit.ly/tpthtuttle

My three formative assessment books:   http://is.gd/tbook

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Education Leaders Promote Higher Users of Mobile Learning Technology

Superintendents, Assistant Superintendents for Curriculum, and Principals as  the educational leaders for their district and building  have the responsibility of  helping students to succeed.  One way to accomplish this goal is to assist teachers through showing them how to use  technology at higher levels to meet learning goals.  A current hot technology centers on mobile learning through tablets and Smartphones.

These educational leaders may enlist the assistance of the Director of Technology or a technology specialist to show teachers how to quickly climb the ladder of learning with mobile learning.  Unfortunately, when people introduce  a new technology, they  generally tend to show  its lower levels of learning such as for drill (memorization) or comprehension.  Those people demonstrating tablets or Smartphones will not focus on using these mobile learning devices to access factual knowledge such as through Chacha or Google.  Instead, they will show how students can create a Google Form survey and then send  it to collect much data about any topic .  For example, one group of  Health students create a healthy food checklist of how many servings  (0, ,1 2,3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9) of vegetables, fruits, meat, etc. people actually eat each day and an age range of the person such as 5-9, 10-15, 16-20, …  The students send it out to their friends, etc. and within 48 hours they have over 400 responses which Google Forms automatically tabulates for them. They prepare a mini-presentation about the results.

The leaders will show teachers how their students can use Google images to contrast visual information important to subject area learning.  As an illustration,  students in groups of two may search for Geography and each group has a  different country in South America such as Geography Venezuela, Geography Colombia, etc.  Students can find images that show ocean, rivers,  mountains, plains, etc.  The students do human graphs of geography.  The student group from Venezuela picks a geographic feature  from its country such as mountains. All the groups that have mountains in their country raise their hands.  Then, the next country Colombia picks a different geography such as ocean. Again, all the groups that have ocean raise their hands.  This continues until all the geographic features have been covered. The teacher keeps a chart on the board with the number of countries having the same feature. Students discuss the chart and its implication.

What high level uses of mobile learning will your teachers use?

I have many Spanish spontaneous speaking activities at Teacherspayteachers:  http://bit.ly/tpthtuttle

My formative assessment books:   http://is.gd/tbook

Administrators Learn From Others Through Google Forms

Superintendents and other central office people often need to find out information, collect real time data, opinions or interests of others.  Likewise, a building principal might want to survey the views of his/her staff. He/She may be looking for alternative ways of solving a possible school problem.  When  administrators receive suggestions, opinions, etc from others and have up-to-the-minute data, they can make wiser decisions. An easy way to quickly get information from others is through Google Forms.

One just needs a Google email and then they can create a Google Form.

Go to Documents on the Google menu bar.

Click on New

Click on Form.

Type in  the title  of the form such as Hall Problem.

Add in any directions.

Select from several type of questions. Can use as many different types, each in a different question.  Those questions that allow for a specific answer (multiple choice  Checkboxes, Choose from a lists, scale, and grid) can  automatically analyze the number of responses for each choice. If you include numerical or very short answers, people can answer these from their Smartphone.
Text – short phrases or a short sentence
Paragraph – longer answers such as multiple sentences
Multiple Choice (select one of the answers)
Checkboxes (select one or more of the answers)
Choose from a list
Scale Rate something on a scale of 1-5 or 1-1o
Grid Rate a series of items on a scale of 1-5

Remember to click on “Makes  this a required question” if the survey takers have to answer the question.

Move any question up and down by clicking on it, holding down on it, and moving it up or down.

Click on Save.

Go to Forms, Edit and copy the url (http://..). at the bottom of the page.  Email that url to the people you want to take the survey or  take that long URL and shorten it using bit.ly so that people can type  it directly in their Smartphone or tablet.  Be specific about when the closing date is for taking the survey.

To see the results, go to Forms – Show Summary of responses.  The numerical answers will be a graph form. The text answers for any question will be grouped together.

For those  administrators that want real time  data at a meeting,  get the URL of the form, shorten it using bit.ly, and display that shortened URL at a meeting so the people can take the form right then on their Smartphones or tablets.  Show them the results instantly.

Are you ready to learn from others? Are you ready to make better decisions based on real-time information from others.

I have Spanish spontaneous speaking activities at Teacherspayteachers:  http://bit.ly/tpthtuttle

My formative assessment books:   http://is.gd/tbook