SurveyMonkey Solution To Assessing Group Participation

Waking up, I sometimes notice the first thing that is on the 'highway sign of my mental freeway'. Steve Martin’s movie set in Los Angeles invented that visual motif. Here in Pipe Creek there are few highway signs, except those announcing the bar’s regular belt sander races.

My imagined highway signs point me, usually in clear, concise English, to a solution for a problem I’ve been pondering, I’ve had lost items reappear, ideas for fixing something, new approaches to correcting a problem. I think of these billboard moments as a bit of a connection to the heavens. 

This morning’s billboard was a solution to a way to have my students give me an honest, well-thought out self and group evaluation of their work on a long-term group project, Topic Exploration. They are exploring topics such as "What is it like being a college student and working part-time?", "What is it like being a college student and paying for college" or "What is it like living in post 9-11 America?"

Topics Exploration is patterned after Michael Wesch’s "A Vision of Students Today". 

http://youtu.be/dGCJ46vyR9o 

Six groups in each section of my five sections of Introduction to Mass Communications have spent the past three weeks refining a research question, and collecting responses to the question from social media  (usually Facebook, but others have also been used like Google docs and Google moderator). Some have collected more than 100 responses, others less than 50. Their analysis also included scholarly articles from the colleges online databases from the library. 

It’s been an “all electronic” project, no posters or hand written surveys were allowed, as the idea is to use “relevant technologies”. The students have been busy this week finishing their collection and analysis of the categories their responses fall into ( e.g. gender, age, pro, con).

They have started the fun part of creating their project electronic media productions. Their work in Powerpoint, Prezi, video and info graphics. Some are including white board animations. The productions should speak for itself-- self contained and complete, all about the data they have gathered and studied on their topic, with a bibliography, in the assigned length of between four and six minutes. It is a recording of their work; Students who create the project sit and watch it with the rest of the class as it plays.

As part of their evaluation and reflection on the project, ’ll have each of the group members fill out a brief survey that tells me how they evaluate themselves and their group members individually, on cooperation, contributions, communication, leadership. They can also note other comments, ideas they want to share with me on this survey.

I wanted to do this electronically, and was unable to get our college’s online system, Blackboard, to do exactly what I knew I could do with SurveyMonkey, but there were still unanswered questions as to how I would collect and manage responses from five sections of six groups each. 

One problem with group evaluations is that they tend to be dashed off by students when completed at a table with their group, usually with glowing remarks for all group members.  Partly, there is a lack of privacy when they fill out the surveys by hand sitting at the table with their group.  I know that to get honest, considered feedback will require the instrument to be brief and out of the view from their group member’s eyes, so I decided an electronic form would better than a hand out they would fill in at their desk.

I will use SurveyMonkey to distribute, but with one important difference. I’ll forego the usual very detailed survey that would take each student through about ten LIkert-style questions about their and their group’s work-habits and participation in the project’s planning and completion. 

Instead, I took the cue from my morning billboard moment, and created a simpler set of 1-3 questions that they can respond to in short paragraphs: In your opinion, which of your group members (including you) were group leaders whose work and participation you consider “above the call of duty”?  In your opinion, which of your group members (including you) should be recognized for their leadership skills? Conversely, which of your group members did less than their share of the required work?

I’m sure there are pro’s and con’s to what I am considering, both technical and otherwise. I have about a week before the evaluations are needed. Any ideas on how to improve? I can shoot you the link to the survey if you would like to check it out.