Online feedback could improve curricula

A student sits in class, too busy doodling to notice the teacher barking for attention mid-lecture. While he is tempted to suggest alternative methods of carrying out the lesson, the student bites back his tongue, afraid to jeopardize his grade for the sake of a more productive class period. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

This student’s predicament could be avoided if the school provided a tangible way for students to anonymously offer suggestions concerning their teacher’s teaching methods or classes in general.

Such a system would not only enable teachers to receive helpful feedback but would also provide an opportunity for students to honestly express their own opinions.

This can be carried out in the form of a survey or online questionnaire, both of which are simple and efficient.

While there are online options such as www.ratemyteachers.com and www.campushopper.com, many students view such websites as trivial. An official survey or online questionnaire offered by the school, on the other hand, would be much more legitimate and useful for both students and teachers.

“[A survey] would definitely help,” sophomore Jasmine Xu said. “The bubbles in a Scantron aren’t enough; sometimes I’d like to straight-up write up about how much I like or despise said teacher and actually express my opinions.”

The ideal relationship between a student and a teacher should be mutually constructive, with teachers helping students to learn and students helping teachers to teach. However, most students fear that their suggestions may be taken too personally and would potentially damage their relationship with their teachers.

Because this concern is both logical and inevitable, an anonymous online questionnaire would be the best possible option.

Students are, admittedly, given the opportunity to take a multiple-choice survey and offer commentary about their teachers in school-wide evaluation processes. While new teachers are required to undergo the assessment every year and tenured teachers every other year, tenured teachers can choose to opt out fairly frequently.

“The assessment was incredibly helpful,” Latin teacher Krista Greksouk said. “For each of the topics listed on the Scantron, I’m given a percentage of the amount of students who think a certain aspect about me and my class.”

As such, having the option to opt out of the survey process is detrimental because teachers lose the opportunity to receive student feedback that may offer suggestions in aspects that they may not have noticed before.

Also, the evaluation process is lengthy and does not offer the flexibility that a concise online survey would have.

These problems can be prevented if the administration provides students with an online survey that enables students to participate in polls or post comments regarding a teacher’s performance.

Participation in such a system doesn’t have to be enforced or even required. With the option of such a system, however, students motivated by genuine suggestions for their teachers will be able to post potentially constructive feedback.

While there are many successful and inspiring teachers at school, nobody is perfect. Students, as the chief recipients of their teaching, are the best source of positive feedback and constructive criticism.

“Education is all about a complete feedback loop,” sophomore Adron Mason said. “We students are lucky to get that for our work a third of the time. That has, until now, been a dream at best.”