This session is a workshop to gather and share ideas on where, why, and how to gather student feedback for our various projects.
Mike and Sherwin, VPTL Student Technology
Thanks for coming
You’re already in groups
This session is a group discussion
The prompts…
• What do you do currently to gather or utilize student feedback?
• What type of feedback would be useful?
• How could we gather feedback?
• “I” Time
• Get together into groups of 4-5
• Decide spokesperson and group notetaker
• Round Table Discussion
• Narrow ideas to present (finish by: )
• Spokesperson from each group presents
For the things we currently do and how we could do it better?
"We do focus groups, with whoever signs up, usually with incentives. We also do what I would say, random Focus Groups but within stakeholder groups- people who are already invested in the services we provide…”
"We table at events… have ppl interact with our site…"
"We talk to interns and use Qualtrics"
"The main things we try to get feedback on is what they want to know; what are their pain points, what new tech are they seeing [coming onto campus]”
Incentives: Amazon gift cards, food...
MT: "Pro-tip" (ask the kids say): Pizza is good but it’s the default- Ask them what they want to eat- they are more likely to come for something other than pizza; there are may student mailing lists to promote on
“A common theme for our group is that we don’t have direct access to students- we have to go 2-3 layers of access so we don’t get clear information (e.g. what forum products they’re using in the class room)— What would be helpful for us is to know where can we get more direct quantitative information"
“We want to reach Prospective students- What web sites do they use or things they would be interested in having a press solution for: We’d like to know how we can ask partners (ex: RCCs), student groups, student councils, and other stakeholders that could be a third party to help set that up for us
MT: “Yes- RCCs are a good connection. We might take more advantage of them than other groups; We can reach almost every students via RCCs so we don’t abuse it too much. But also student clubs and dept mailing lists are a good avenue once you get permission to post
"Our group talked about getting feedback on usability on the diff products we’re using."
Reasons why:
"We would like to work with students to find the squishy feedback - when we get comments like “it's difficult to find stuff”, what does that really mean?"
"We would like to use direct student feedback to debunk what faculty and staff think they know about the student experience"
"Our methods tend to be incentives and over- recruiting"
MT: Pro-tip: Being mindful of student schedules: We find that 6-7pm (weekdays) is the secret golden time ; outside of business hours ; first 2 weeks of school. After that it becomes progressively more difficult; Students consider opportunity costs ; Students like to make an impact so when setting up your session, “what's the impact”’ is a good question to ask yourself
We get feedback from a variety of perspectives:
• students reach out to us on (ex: encryption compliance)
• Earth: we are just starting to get that feedback process ; now waiting for the follow up
• GSB: They get asked their opinion so much, students are getting survey fatigue; how to be more focused? Slack actually seems to work well. Also, creating committees focused on different areas: student who join committees are self-selecting
• Advisory Committee @ the Law school is in a testing phase
• SUL: We would like to have profiles of diff users for SW dev; Repeat periodic surveys 3-5 years to see what’s different.
• “There will be food!” works quite well
• We would like to consider the broader student community when we make a change- ASSU feedback; get good suggestions on rolling stuff out
MT: Yes- getting students on the panel and early on in the process is important; Students may be very against your path; they also have great ideas- they’re Stanford students!
As an instructor, I would like to know how to use feedback as a way to help prospective students shop for classes including:
• helping instructors improve the course if they are so inclined
• I was told "don’t take student feedback to serious"; so we talk less about it BUT...
• There is a lot we can do about helping people who want to take a class make an informed decision
• Why can’t we use the "Amazon model" about shopping for courses: Consumers rely more on product reviews than product description
• Detailed matrix
• How to authenticate the student who make the comments (no anonymous comments)
• How to deal w negative comments
• There is no option for this- how could we integrate this into carta.stanford.edu (Course exploration based on the choices of Stanford students
"We had a session w some PhDs. At the end they said “thank you- this is the first time someone actually listened to us”
VPTL is working on a video: "what i wish my professor knew about me”
Course Evals are at the end- doesn’t help the current student or the professor
