By now, I am sure similar to me, you have learned that teaching in an online environment is HARD! This makes me think that if this is hard for me, then what must it be like for my students? After the first week of digital learning (see my 2-week digital day lesson plan), I decided to have students fill out a survey about what they thought of their Latin digital day work. Since I am just one of their six classes, I wanted student feedback to know what they thought of their Latin assignments in terms of difficulty/ease, to gauge how does my workload compare to their other classes, and to check in with them personally.
In the Google Form survey, I asked the following questions with a Likert-type scale response:
- Strongly Disagree
- Disagree
- No opinion
- Agree
- Strongly Agree
- Digital Day material for Latin has been challenging for me.
- Digital Day work for Latin is overly time-consuming compared to the work in my other classes.
- Digital Day work for Latin has contained a lot of variety.
- Compared to my other classes, I look forward to doing Digital Day work for Latin.
- Digital Day work for Latin has been difficult for me to complete due to access to technology.
- I find the daily screencast helpful in explaining directions.
- I prefer seeing all of my Digital Day Latin assignments for the week on eClass at once.
- I prefer seeing my Digital Day Latin assignments on eClass released on a daily basis.
- I am tired of Digital Day work and wish that I were back at school learning instead of doing learning independently.
- I am deeply concerned/worried about COVID-19.
Observations
- I am very grateful for the feedback, because it will definitely inform how I move forward.
- After the first week of digital learning, students overwhelmingly seemed to have a very positive attitude towards their online Latin assignments, with most saying that it was not overly difficult/challenging, not overly time consuming compared to their other classes, and that they thought that there was a variety in the assignments. Most students agreed that they look forward to doing their Latin work compared to their other classes.
- For most students, access to technology was not a major issues. For those where it was an issue, I am aware of many who have to share a computer with other siblings, thus limiting their access.
- After just one week, about 2/3 of students were tired of digital learning and wanted to return back to school. As of today, it has been two weeks since I gave this survey. I venture to say that the number is probably MUCH higher now.
- After one week, students were split in terms of how they felt about COVID-19, with 1/3 not concerned at all, 1/3 having no opinion, and 1/3 expressing concern. I wonder how they feel now that it is two weeks later and that the number of COVID-19 numbers have dramatically risen and so much has changed in their lives in those two weeks.
So consider checking in with your students about how they feel about your assignment workload and make adjustments where needed. At this point, it is no longer about keeping up with instructional calendars and making sure that they are prepared for next year - that ship sailed away A LONG TIME AGO! It is about making assignments worthwhile and meaningful for students.