http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue51/foggo/This was done for an undergraduate module on a Communications Policy Issues. The student’s assignment was to prepare a bibliography on a chosen topic which would be peer reviewed by their fellow students. Five articles or book chapters were also to be reviewed in the presentation. The students would provide a summary and show how they related the topic of the presentation.
This case study shows how students were taught the skills they need to find information relevant to their subject area. Blogs were used as a tool for formative assessment and were used to measure student expectations before teaching, and their level of satisfaction with the session afterwards. It helps the instructor in determining if his teaching objectives had been met and if the student’s expectations had been met.
The blog actually worked well because it engaged all the students in considering their objectives for the session. It was determined that the lesson took too much time and it was hard to get the students to re-focus on their group work. It was agreed that future sessions would require additional time if they were to be fully used and integrated with other activities.
This feedback could be useful for future students. If new students had access to the instructor feedback they could chose the instructor who they thought could provide them the best learning possibility. All I had to on was word of mouth when I chose my instructors if I even had that. Having this information readily available would have been very helpful.
Providing instructor feedback electronically is a very good idea. This way there is no throwing out the worst reviews. You get a more well rounded picture of the instructor being reviewed. I think it’s fairly obvious if a student is just bashing the instructor because of personal dislikes. I think this way should be used over submitting paper reviews after each class.
