Another week, another reflection about online facilitating. This week, the questions I have to answer are the following:
How will you get feedback from participants?
When I teach I always ask my students to grade me, to evaluate my lessons. I always do orally as we are always running after time in secondary school. I know that for some people it does not seem very professional not to keep in paper track about what the kids think.
Asking them helps me planning ahead. For example, if the students tell me that an activity is rubbish I will not do it again. At the end of the day they are the clients in my shop, and if I want the clients to come back I should do what they want. I obviously cannot change the content but I can change the context or the delivery of what I teach.
In our online course this year, I have asked the students to give me feedback using a googleform. I ask them to fill it in Week 6 -we are now only Week four in our course, so I do not have the results yet. Most of them tell me while we are teaching if something is not right and at the end of each online session I ask all the participants to tell how it was, to grade the lesson and to tell me what they didn’t like.
How will you deal with criticism?
I have never had bad criticism from my students. I do not mean that they say that what I do is good, what I mean is that whatever they want to say they say it very nicely. So they might give me a 4/10 but they do it with a smile and give me a lot of encouragement.
I suppose if the participants give you constructive criticism it is always good to know how/where to progress. I like people criticising what I do because it helps me to get better.
How will you make sure people feel safe when they give you their feedback?
Using anonymous form is a good way for people to feel they can tell you what they really want.
How will you ensure you continue to improve your online facilitation skills?
By using the feedbacks received, carrying on reading (blogs, divers communities, twitter feeds etc...) and by attending other people’s online event, I will be sure improving my own skills.
Thanks Florence for your reflections on this topic. How much does the power you have over the students as their teacher impact on their feedback to you? Do you prepare your students on how to give constructive feedback? I have found feedback to be a tricky issue when I am responsible for grading students in my context (adult learners) - it seems to me that some adult learners cannot give constructive feedback for love nor money. But maybe it's me...that I cannot take feedback very well....
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