Evaluation: the first questionnaires

On June 19th we held an informational meeting for all the teachers who will be attending the seminar in July. Thirty of 60 invitees showed up; I was incredibly impressed. The meeting wasn’t called very far in advance (June 16th, I believe?), and we didn’t have a list of most addresses or phone numbers. Still, Waldinde (a teacher here who is working with us) managed to find or leave messages for the majority- in the span of a day and a half. (It takes me anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days to find any one person. I can’t imagine how he found them all.) Jacson (the coordinator here who helped initiate the seminar, and my good friend) shared all the logistical details, and then I handed out two questionnaires and a blank sheet of paper for each. The two questionnaires are something like “classroom management” and “content management.” With each questionnaire we have asked for a pseudonym that they will use for all questionnaires. This allows anonymity, but it allows us to track individuals as well. Then we ask some professor-specific information: education, number of years teaching, subjects, and schools. We also ask some school-specific questions: type of school (public/private, girls/boys/mixed, primary/secondary (They’re all secondary right now, except a few small schools that cover both.), and the class size. Then each questionnaire has about three pages of questions about how and what the teacher teaches. They are definitely long, and I am thankful for the captive audience. Maybe future questionnaires can be shorter, once I can see which questions give the most interesting/useful information.

On the blank paper, I asked the teachers to write some of their basic information- this time with their real names: best contact info, years of experience, and subjects. Then one more questionnaire, but I had Jacson simply read it aloud. It was about computer and internet knowledge and experience. For each of five areas, they labeled themselves as level 1, 2, or 3. This will help us put them into groups for the internet training, but we should also be able to monitor how their self-classification changes over time. The vast majority said they do not know how to use a computer, internet, or email. The entire group, however, expressed an earnest desire to receive as much training as possible.

As I have been entering the results of the questionnaires, I’m running into a consistent problem of unanswered questions. A handful answered every question, and a few more only missed a couple. This is a challenge of having participants fill them out on their own. I think some of the unanswered questions are probably the result of time constraints causing them to rush (missed lines here and there), but some may be an indication that a teacher didn’t understand the question, didn’t have an answer, didn’t think it was important, or perhaps felt that no answer was the same as choosing “never” or “no.” Because I have access to all the professors, I have marked the unanswered questions, and I think I will ask them to finish them at the beginning of the seminar. I’m fairly certain that those extra answers should be consistent with those already given, but I think I will keep two files, one of the original and one of the redone questionnaires. For each entry, I’m marking the date the questionnaire was done (and redone), as well as the number of questions that were skipped during the first completion. They may not be useful, but on the chance that timing or the personalities/abilities of teachers who didn’t fully finish is relevant, it’s nice to have the option of crossing out the possibility.

One question I didn’t ask and wish I had is gender. We only have three or four women teachers, but it would be nice to see if their answers vary noticeably from those of the men. Perhaps I can add the question on a future questionnaire.

We’re starting the process of tracking down the rest of the professors who didn’t make it to the first meeting. Hopefully I’ll be able to get all of them to finish the questionnaires before the first day of the seminar.