Feedback Tools for Teachers are the topic of our blog post today!
Feedback—often dubbed the cornerstone of effective teaching and learning—is indeed a two-way street. It’s not just about pointing out what went wrong; it’s a dynamic process that provides valuable insights into the learning journey for both students and educators.
As a seasoned educational researcher with a knack for edtech, I understand how crucial feedback can be in a classroom setting, be it physical or virtual. In a pedagogical landscape that’s increasingly digital, finding the right tech tools for gathering and giving feedback can be a game-changer.
So, for those of you looking to up your feedback game, I’ve put together this comprehensive list of practical feedback tools, and let me tell you, it’s not just a random assembly. Divided into two overarching categories—tools for collecting student feedback and tools for providing feedback to students—this collection draws upon years of experience, research, and genuine love for educational technology.
Feedback Tools for Teachers
Because I know one size doesn’t fit all, each category is further broken down into sub-categories to help you navigate to the tools that best fit your specific needs.
I – Tools to gather students feedback
I arranged the feedback collection tools into the following sub-categories: form creation tools, digital clickers, game-based feedback tools, formative assessment tools, and survey and polling tools.
Form Creation tools
You can collect students feedback using forms and questionnaires. Below are some good online form builder tools to help you create and share various types of forms:
1- Google Forms
Google Forms is Google’s form builder. It is completely free and is integrated with Google Drive suite. Google Forms offers all the required functionalities to help you create your form within minutes. You can start with one of its pre-made form templates or create your form from scratch.
Either way you will be able to add your own input by inserting fields and sections. Responses from Google Forms are automatically saved to Google Spreadsheet where you can access and analyze them the way you want.
2. Jotform
Jotform offers an intuitive drag and drop editor to help you customize your form the way you want. You can simply drag and drop questions and form fields and place them anywhere in the form.
Jotform offers different sharing options. You may choose to publish your form as a standalone link or use an embed code to easily embed your forms directly into your blog or website. Each time someone responds or fills out your forms you will receive email notifications.
3. Typeform
Typeform offers a powerful form builder that enables you to create beautiful forms. You can start with a pre-made form template or build your form from scratch. Typeform uses a smart editor that can anticipate your questions when you start typing and add them automatically. Your forms can include various media types from GIFs to custom designs.
Digital Clickers
Digital clickers are interactive learning technologies that provide teachers with an effective way to collect data about their teaching and engage students in learning. Clickers can be used for various purposes.
For instance, teachers can use them to conduct quick formative assessments using short quizzes, polls, exit tickets, surveys and more. Responses are collected and graded in real-time providing teachers with important analytic insights on students performance and progress.
Here are some good digital clickers to try out:
1. Socrative
Socrative helps you engage students through formative assessments using quizzes, question polls, exit tickets, and space races. ‘Socrative will instantly grade, aggregate and provide visuals of results to help you identify opportunities for further instruction…To get started using Socrative, simply register for a Socrative Teacher account. Your Socrative account will work with other Socrative Apps and via all browsers. Students can connect to your unique room by opening their apps or joining your room on Socrative from any device.’
2. Slido
Slido is another good audience engagement tool that allows you to engage your students using live polls, Q&A, quizzes, surveys, and word clouds. For instance the Q&A feature allows participants to ask their own questions with the option to pose their questions anonymously thus encouraging shy students to take part in class discussions.
3. Plickers
Plickers allows you to collect real-time feedback through polls and quizzes. The way it works is simple: ‘just give each student a card (a “paper clicker”), and use your Android smartphone or tablet to scan them to do instant checks-for-understanding, exit tickets, and impromptu polls. Best of all, your data is automatically saved, student-by-student, at plickers.com’.
Game-based Feedback tools
Here are some game-based learning tools to use to collect students feedback. The tools allow you to create various types of interactive games and quizzes, collect feedback in real time, analyze performance, and track progress.
1. Quizlet
Quizlet is another clicker app that allow teachers to create game-based quizzes to share with students. It also offers polling and survey making features to use to collect students feedback and test their comprehension. As students submit their responses, you get to access analytic insights regarding their performance.
2. Kahoot
Kahoot is a game-based tool that allows you to engage your students through a wide range of games (kahoots) and challenges. You can either create a kahoot from scratch or use one of the pre-designed templates. Kahoot offers 6 editable templates to choose from. Each kahoot can include various types of questions (e.g., quiz, true or false, poll, puzzle, open ended).
3. Quizizz
Quizizz enables you to create both teacher-paced and student-paced quizzes and lessons. Your quizzes can embed various types of questions (multiple choice, open ended, polls, fill in the blanks, etc.) and media (e.g., images, videos, voice clips, and audio recordings). Quizizz library offers access to a huge collection of ready-made quizzes and lessons spanning several subjects and grades.
4. Quizalize
Quizalize is a game-based quiz making tool that allows you to enhance students engagement and boost their participation. You can create different types of quizzes either from scratch or using a ready-made template. You can add your questions or import them from a spreadsheet, and set the quiz duration (from 5 seconds to 5 minutes). Your quizzes can include images, audio, text-to-speech, among others.
5. Blooket
Blooket is another game-based tool that lets you create a wide range of educational games. You can host live games that students can play using a generated ID or assign games as homework for students to play at their own pace. You can create your own question sets or use ready-made sets created by members of the Blooket community.
Formative assessment tools
A quick formative assessment is another great way to gauge students knowledge and collect their feedback. Here are some tools to help you conduct formative assessments in your class:
1. Socrative Teacher
Socrative Teacher helps you engage students through formative assessments using quizzes, question polls, exit tickets, and space races. ‘Socrative will instantly grade, aggregate and provide visuals of results to help you identify opportunities for further instruction…To get started using Socrative, simply register for a Socrative Teacher account. Your Socrative account will work with other Socrative Apps and via all browsers. Students can connect to your unique room by opening their apps or joining your room on Socrative from any device.’
2. Goformative
GoFormative is an educational platform that allows teachers to create various types of assignments that students can interact with in real time and across different devices. Teachers can view students responses in real-time and provide timely feedback. GoFomative is an ideal tool for doing formative assessments, and to a certain extent summative assessments as well.
Survey and poll creation tools
You can also gather students feedback through polls and surverys. Below are survey and polling tools to consider in this regard.
1. Mentimeter
Mentimeter is a polling tool that enables you to create interactive presentations and quizzes with real-time voting. The way it works is simple: use the tool’s editor to create interactive slides that contain various question types (e.g., multiple choice, word cloud, open ended, scales, ranking, and Q&A).
2. Poll Everywhere
Poll Everywhere is a powerful web tool for creating and distributing polls. It offers five types of polls to choose from: multiple choice poll, free response poll, true or false poll, clickable images poll, and discourse poll. Your respondents can vote on your poll either through SMS or via the web using the generated link you provide them.
3. Pollmaker
Pollmaker is easy and simple tool to create and share polls and surveys. First, type in your questions and answers, select a theme or create your own and on the ‘settings tab set options like allowing multiple answers, allowing voters to enter their own answers and much more. Next, click share and copy your poll Vote url to share with voters. You can also hit Embed to place the poll directly on your website or blog.’
Tools to provide feedback to students
There is nothing better than giving feedback to students face to face, directly, but since this type of feedback is not always feasible , here are some good tools to consider when providing feedback. I focused primarily on audio feedback tools, written feedback can be communicated pretty much on every tool and platform from sending it via email to adding it as side notes in Google Docs or Word.
Audio feedback tools
There are various tools that enable you to record audio feedback to share with students including:
1. Mote
Mote is an audio recording tool that allows you to create and share audio notes via Gmail, Google Docs, Slides, Google Forms, and Google Classroom. You can also create audio notes for any website or application by using Mote Chrome extension. Mote audio notes can be transcribed into more than 20 languages including Spanish, English, Arabic, Portuguese, French, among others.
2. Kaizena
Kaizena allows you to easily insert voice comments into documents. The way it works is easy: you simply highlight parts in the document and click on the record icon to add your audio feedback. Students can reply to your audio feedback and/or share feedback with each other.
Using Kaizena’s Lessons feature you will be able to save your audio and/ or text feedback to re-use in other documents. Lessons also allows you to save any website as a lesson and to automatically embed YouTube videos in your feedback.
3. Audio recording apps
In this list I featured a collection of some of the best audio recording apps to use on your mobile devices. These apps will enable you to record audio, access live transcriptions, edit your audio by trimming and cutting parts, mix audio recordings, add textual notes, save your recordings to the cloud or share them via email or on social media websites and many more.
Final thoughts
Wrapping things up, we’ve ventured through an array of feedback tools designed to make the educational process more interactive, insightful, and downright effective. From the simplicity of Google Forms to the engagement offered by game-based platforms like Quizlet and Kahoot, there’s a tool here to meet diverse classroom needs.
Keep in mind, the ideal tool isn’t necessarily the one with the most bells and whistles; it’s the one that fits seamlessly into your existing pedagogy, making the task of feedback collection and delivery easier and more efficient for you.
One aspect I’d urge you not to overlook is that these tools are most effective when they are a natural extension of your teaching style. I’ve personally experimented with many of these tools, and it’s the ones that genuinely meshed with my teaching ethos that had the most impact. Whether you’re collecting real-time insights with digital clickers or using audio tools like Mote for personalized remarks, the key is to use these resources to create a dialogue, a feedback loop that benefits everyone involved—students, educators, and even parents.
