Gathering feedback about KCs in learning

What to gather? | What to focus on? | Ways to gather | Ratings | Sentence starters |
Photo response

Why ask students?

There are a number of reasons for getting feedback from students, which are relevant for key competencies:

• Students’ experience of learning, as well as outcomes, matters.
• Students’ perceptions of what happens in the classroom can, at times, differ from how teachers might describe it.
• Students may, for various reasons, not share their views about learning unless explicitly invited to do so.

What to gather feedback about?

Sometimes, asking directly about what you are interested in may not be the most successful way to find out about it. Asking students how well key competencies are going in their classroom, for example, may not yield interesting information. But asking about other important aspects of the key competencies may give a more useful indication about KCs in your programme. 

Five possible indicators of key competencies to ask about are:

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What to focus on?

It is useful to gather feedback at various points in time:

• about a specific activity
• about a lesson
• about a sequence of lessons
• at the end of a term or year.

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Ways to gather feedback from students

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Student ratings

Student ratings provide a quick and easy means of gathering information from a whole class or wider group of students. Short questionnaires can be given on paper or set up online (using Survey Monkey, for example) to make analysing responses easy.

Students could be asked to rate: 

• their agreement with statements that indicate their involvement and interest in the programme
• the frequency with which they apply their learning in relevant contexts
• the extent to which adults and students are responsible for organising events that provide authentic learning opportunities.

Interest and involvement 

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Relevance of learning

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Responsibility for organising – authentic, meaningful tasks

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Application

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Interest and motivation

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Postbox sentence starters

Sentence starters are way of getting feedback quickly and easily at the end of a day, or week, or term. Students can write their feedback on a small piece of paper, gathered, for example, in a feedback postbox, with or without their names.

Providing sentence starters (either in writing on the paper, or orally) makes it easier for students to respond. Continuing on from a sentence starter gives the prompt that many need to express their view. (Some examples below.)

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Photo response

Photographs from real classroom experiences are a useful resource to prompt students feedback. They may be used to getting feedback in a one-on-one discussion, a group or class discussion, or independently of the teacher using ICTs.

The photograph may be of, for example:

• a group working on a task
• an individual working on a task
• a shared classroom experience
• a learning experience outside the classroom.

The photo can then be used in a discussion with students to find out about:

• relevance – ‘What was the point of what you were doing?’
• interest – ‘Was this interesting or not?  Why?’
• motivation – ‘Why were you doing this?’
• application – ‘How might you use what you were thinking about in other situations?’
• inclination – ‘Do you think you’ll carry on learning about this?’