Week 9! March 10/21

As far as getting feedback / feedforward, I've done a few things in the past in order to improve my courses going forward. I would typically throw together a survey on surveymonkey.  They would typically get 5-8 questions, most with a 1-5 star rating and it made it painless and easy to follow. The final question on the survey would be open ended for any thoughts, comments or suggestions and I'd find that most students would skip this section, or put in some generic comment. I do these things so that I can make adjustments for the course going forward, but it rarely benefits those students who had just given me the feedback since the survey is done at the end of the course. Going forward, I think that doing one of these (anonymous) surveys part way through the class would allow me to get a better feel for the class' feeling and make changes that are meaningful for the current group.
For my current ECI blended class, I think I will use forums with specific headings for topics that I think need to be there. I like the idea of having a general / misc area where students can post about a variety of things and not feel handcuffed that they need to always be posting about one certain topic or whatever. Of course, I 'd offer some areas for resources and topic specific questions as well. I would limit the number of areas so that students don't find confusion in where a certain post would fit or where they could find information on certain topics. Too many choices will create confusion and too few will limit student's ability to post.  Gotta find the happy medium with maybe 3-5 topic areas to ensure they are being used and not overwhelming.