Pre & Post Course Survey with Google Forms

PEDAGOGICAL OBJECTIVE

Being Human in STEM (taught Spring 2019 and Spring 2020) is both an Amherst College course and a larger project that works across departments and institutions to explore how colleges can foster more inclusive STEM communities, and how we can help students and faculty navigate diverse identities in the classroom and beyond. The example we present here is a small but crucial piece of this larger program.

The Being Human in Stem website lists as a resource the article Structure Matters: 21 Teaching Strategies to Promote Student Engagement and Cultivate Classroom Equity by Kimberly D. Tanner of San Francisco State University. One of its recommended practices is to create a flow of information from the student to the instructor, information about the student’s background in STEM, their learning experiences and struggles thus far, their goals for the course, and how they view themselves as a STEM learner.

ACADEMIC TECHNOLOGY TOOL 

Google Forms to create surveys.

Featured Faculty & Staff

Sheila Jaswal

 Sheila Jaswal

BIOCHEMISTRY-BIOPHYSICS, CHEMISTRY

 

 

 

Sarah Bunnell

 Sarah Bunnell

CENTER FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING

 

 

 

megan lyster
 

Megan Lyster

CENTER FOR Community engagement

Description

To learn more about the students in the class and their lived experience in STEM, Professor Jaswal consulted with Dr. Sarah Bunnell, Associate Director & STEM Specialist in  the Center for Teaching and Learning. Together they created a Google Form and linked to it from Moodle. This Google form served as a pre and post instrument to capture any change in student perceptions by the end of the course.

Questions included:

  • Number of semesters at Amherst
  • Number of STEM courses taken at Amherst 
  • Their seasons for taking the HSTEM course
  • What the student hoped to learn, about the topic and about themselves
  • Whether they identified as a “STEM person”, and whether or not they have “thrived” or “survived” STEM classes.

survey screenshot

Students took the survey in class, on the first day. This survey primed the students for the next assignment, which was to write a longer reflective “HSTEM Story” about their experience being a human in STEM. 

Students also took the same survey at the end of the semester (some of the questions were rephrased to reflect on what they learned). This allowed the faculty and teaching partners to assess how students’ view of the topic, and of themselves, changed over time. 

student responses

An example set of responses from students, when asked about past behaviors that influenced their sense of belonging to the STEM community.

Google Forms provides a user friendly  and accessible platform for collecting this type of data, and it can feed results into a Google Sheet for further analysis.

Campus Partners 

Being Human in Stem receives extensive support and partnership from the Center for Teaching and Learning, the Center for Community Engagement and the Research & Instruction Librarians. 

Accessibility Bonus 

How to...

Published Spring 2020 by Academic Technology Services

Posted Spring 2020