If you’re curious about your student’s response to materials; if you need to know when is best to set up the next synchronous meeting; if you want your students to reflect upon whether an assignment caused them to unpack course materials; then ask them.

Surveys, polls, and forms are all tools you may use to interact with your online or face-to-face students.

REFLECTION

Provide your students with the opportunity to reflect upon what they are learning. The action of composing an answer to an open ended question helps cement the material. Alternately, have the student reflect on the real-world application of a task they are performing; you may see a more thorough response to the activity. The student may retain more of the material due to the time they spent considering why it was assigned.

COMMUNICATION

Instructors use these tools to:

• Gather information on student’s understanding.
• Provide an avenue of discussion between the student and the instructor or between students.
• Determine good times to hold the synchronous portions of the class.*
• Allow students to participate in quiz and test preparation. This has the postive side-effect of studying the material.

* An EDSE course uses JotForm to schedule eLive sessions.

FEEDBACK

Instructors use these tools to:

• Refine assignments for following semesters.
• Gather student opinion on current topics.

SOFTWARE OPTIONS

These are only a few of the resources freely available on the web for you to use when communicating with your students:

Google Forms

http://www.alaska.edu/google/

All students and faculty have access to Google Docs. If you are logged into your UA Gmail account, select “Drive,” then choose the red button “Create,” then choose “Form.” Embed it in a Google or WordPress site, or email a link to your students. Responses show up in a spreadsheet within your Google account.

Poll Everywhere

http://www.polleverywhere.com/

There is a free instructor account. Forty responses to any poll. This is not for you if your class has 100+ students. You ask the question and your students can answer using a mobile phone, twitter or a web browser.

JotForm

http://www.jotform.com

The free JotForm account accepts 100 submissions per month. If you are using Dropbox, JotForm dovetails nicely – see how results feed into your Dropbox account by watching http://www.jotform.com/dropbox .