Feedback is a MUST

Greetings readers,

This week's post is brought to by...the need to get out there and hear from your community of learners. Yes it would seem as we are politicians pushing an agenda, but actually this is the case. We are pushing an agenda for learning. Learning the skills that life demands, along with tools (and the means to find additional tools) that will assist each learner as they mature. One way, and I highly recommend it, is through conversation. Reaching out to your users in their respective learning communities is vital to gaining input, insight, and feedback. We have many skills to offer our learners, and a guide the recommends that what learners should be learning, yet we still  must touch base to see where students are. It has been my experience that students are not on schedule with learning the respective skills that are suggested as per curriculum's and such. As a new or seasoned Librarian, it is important to know what the recommendation are, but more importantly, to know what your students and teachers needs. One way to ensure that you have this valuable data for assessment and developing of lessons and resources, is to survey the students and teachers for their needs.

Surveys are a valuable tool to use in assessing for needs. There are many tools available for users, but two in particular stand out for their easy of use, and freedom to cater the survey for students. The two that I am speaking of are the Google tool Google Forms, and the Microsoft 365 web tool Forms.

Both tools are web based tools and reports the results to a spread sheet. Both tools allow the user to create a survey with different types of questions and results. You are allowed to ask multiple choice, yes, or no, and short answers.

While there are many other survey tools that are catered for Library skills assessments, these tools are great because you are able to customize your survey to ask the specific questions which you are seeking to answer.

Please note that if you do not have access to Microsoft 365, you will not be able to use this particular tool. However, the Google Form tool is available to anyone with a Google account.