Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

Over the last few months we have reviewed a number of interesting web tools and mobile apps teachers can use to collect students feedback. And as we have argued elsewhere, access to students feedback can positively impact both the teaching and learning process. On the one hand, it provides teachers with a discerning window through which they can assess their teaching methodologies, assess students comprehension, and based on gleaned insights, formulate working plans to meet students learning needs. On the other hand, the act of providing feedback empowers students with a voice, makes them feel valued and that their opinion matters and therefore engages them on a deeper level in the learning process.

Exit tickets or cards are informal assessment tools teachers can use to assess students understanding at the end of a class. They can also be used for formative assessment purposes to help teachers design better instructional content based on students feedback. Exit tickets can take the form of a prompt or a question related to what have been taught in the lesson.

One of the strategies that I use when creating lesson plans is to reflect on the previous lesson. Part of that reflection includes feedback from students. This can be done by simply asking students to raise their hands in response to a "did you get it?" type of question, but I like to have better record of responses than just a hand count. Here are some tools that can be used for collecting exit information from students.

Chat rooms and polling services provide good ways to hear from all of the students in a classroom. These kind of tools allow shy students to ask questions and share comments. For your more outspoken students who want to comment on everything, a feedback mechanism provides a good outlet for them too. In the last few months some of my old-reliable feedback tools shutdown and others were updated.