Christine Latulippe is a Visiting Associate Professor at Linfield University in Oregon. She has tried many strategies for getting to know students early on in the semester, working towards creating safer and more welcoming spaces for student learning. In recent years, Latulippe has begun using a brief online introductory survey to get to know a little bit more about students in her courses. She uses Microsoft Forms, but there are many other digital survey tools available including Qualtrics, Google Forms, Survey Monkey, or a quiz built into your LMS or online homework system.
During the first class sessions, Latulippe posts a QR code for the survey at the front of the classroom, allowing a few minutes each day for students to complete the survey. Students can also find a link to the survey within the first week’s content in the online course shell. This introductory survey is a course assignment, worth 5 points or half of a quiz score; students earn the points regardless of their answers as long as they submit the survey. Latulippe has learned that if she wants students to take the time to complete the survey, she needs to allow that time and provide ample reminders and incentive.
Latulippe’s survey questions vary slightly depending on the term or the course, but the general purpose is getting to know students as humans, their strengths, their concerns, their goals. An example of Latulippe’s introductory survey is linked here. For additional introductory survey ideas, see Maria Tackett’s library example, or the detailed form shared by Addy et al. (2021) in the supplemental materials of the freely available article A Tool to Advance Inclusive Teaching Efforts: The “Who’s in Class?” Form. Each set of questions can serve a different purpose for an instructor.
Digital Resources
Online survey
According to Latulippe, students see a QR code on the screen and pull out their phones without any instruction. They get right down to typing thoughtful answers, with very few students skipping the optional questions on the survey. Students reveal things about themselves that they would likely never share in front of the whole class on the first day or maybe ever. Anecdotally, there seems to be something familiar and comfortable about filling out an online form on their phones. Through the introductory survey, Latulippe has learned about anxiety, illness, recent loss, loves of Snoopy, soccer, music, and cooking. The “what are you really good at?” question is open enough to welcome every student’s own interpretation, yielding responses like crafts, having a strong work ethic, procrastinating, and “sports and not math”.
Asking students to reflect on how they learn best and ways they want to work on their own participation in class helps provide language and tools for achieving their own learning goals. These questions set students up to be more aware of their own and other available approaches to learning, and can be reflected on again at the middle and end of a term with additional online surveys or in-class conversations.
Digital Enablement
The primary advantage to a digital survey is that it allows Latulippe to revisit the responses throughout the first weeks of classes as she gets to know student names and faces. When students briefly introduce themselves to the whole class on the first day, it can be overwhelming for an instructor to take meaningful notes on everyone while looking at faces and trying to also note preferred names and pronunciations. By studying the student survey responses outside of class, Latulippe has time to pay more attention to details for each student and start making connections. She can ask a student a question before or after class about something they shared about themselves on the survey, showing that she has read their responses and that they are not anonymous in her classroom.
The digital survey form can facilitate data summaries and sharing as well. When Latulippe sees that only 20% of a class enjoys coming to student hours, she knows to regularly emphasize her availability and consciously invite students to visit student hours and get questions answered or just say hello. She can also easily present anonymous responses to the whole class on a slide to start a conversation about something like “what are you hoping to get from our time together” at mid-term and have students reflect on progress towards meeting their own goals. Sharing responses with the class has the added benefit of showing students commonalities across replies, letting students to see that they are not alone.