Do you ever wonder EXACTLY what's in the minds of your students or parents? If so, you can use Survey Monkey's free polling service to get some anonymous answers.
The basic version of Survey Monkey is free, but of course, there are upgrade options.
Back in February, I decided I wanted to ask my students some questions. I wanted some feedback on what they liked about English, about me and my teaching style, and about the work we do in class. So I created this survey and posted it on the class blog. I made sure students knew that answering the survey was NOT for a grade, so no one was obligated to answer.
After a few weeks had gone by, I logged into Survey Monkey and checked the results. I asked multiple choice and short answer questions on the survey, and the website compiled the MC answers for me and let me know which percentage answered with letter A, and so on. It was pretty helpful. I felt like the answers were more honest than they would have been if I had done a survey in class. I mean, even if you ask students not to put their names on a survey, a teacher can still tell who wrote what by the handwriting! So this technological tool helped my students to feel a little bit more brave about answering things honestly.
How does this process work? First, you sign up for a free account. Then you click the big green button in the top, right-hand corner that says "Create Survey." Title your survey, and then start writing questions. You can make the answers in any format you wish, which is really nice! The basic version is limited to 10 questions per survey, and you are limited to 100 responses, but those are easy things to get around (if you need more than 10 questions, create a Part I and a Part II. If you need more than 100 responses, create duplicate versions of your survey -- Survey Monkey even lets you copy your own surveys and edit them...so you wouldn't even have to re-type all the answers.) if the need arises.... The on-screen instructions are pretty self-explanatory...I was able to create my first survey in a matter of minutes!
A little note on polling your students on your classroom and your teaching styles: don't ask anything that you don't truly want to know! :) If you encourage students to be honest, they WILL be honest, and some of them can be pretty blunt! I had really great answers on my Survey Monkey poll, but there were a couple of answers that forced me to think more critically about what goes on in my classroom. I mean, that was the point, but it's always a little bit hurtful when you receive negative feedback, however minute of a detail it might be!
Anyway, I think teachers could use this in their classrooms in the way that I did: figure out what's working and what's not! You could also use this at the beginning of the year to get a feel for your population of students: how many of them have over 5 siblings? How many students have parents who work full-time? How many of them have parents who are college graduates? How many students will willingly pick up a book in their spare time? How many students like this particular genre in class? What's one thing this class could do that would keep you interested in its subject? ...I mean, the possibilities for questions are endless! We could glean a lot of information from our students by using surveys...why not try it?/
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