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Home / Teaching / Primary Education Teaching / Volunteering in the Classroom: Feedback, Reviewing and Improving STEM Activities / Gathering feedback from young people

Gathering feedback from young people

STEM Ambassadors and STEM Ambassador Hub discussing feedback tools they use with young people.
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[Stella] STEM ambassadors can get feedback from young people and when they’re doing activity in several ways, they can do it during the activity or after the activity. Within the activity itself, it’s always nice to be able to see the smiles on the faces of the children. You could see from their language that they’re fully engaged in the activity. If for instance, they’re slumped on their desk they’re probably not that engaged in your activity actually. Other ways of getting feedback are just to ask them. It’s nice to be able to ask them at the beginning to see what their prior knowledge is.
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And it’s also nice to find out at the end actually where they’ve come in terms of developing along that classroom activity and whether their knowledge has increased or not, so asking is always a good way of doing it. I’ve seen teachers use Post-It notes, I’ve seen STEM ambassadors use Post-It notes, get them to jot down a few things, what did they learn, what did they get out of the session, things that they didn’t know about, things that are brand new to them, so those are always nice little bits of feedback to get. Questionnaires are always nice.
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Getting feedback after an activity is also quite nice because teachers and students have had a little bit of time to reflect on what actually happened in that session. So they’re probably able to give you a bit more detailed feedback, so just emailing a questionnaire out to teachers, or just asking them a few questions, and the response is always usually very positive. Because they’re very grateful that you’ve come out and you’ve given them that time. [Adam] In the last ten minutes of the session, I like to do a review and a roundup of what we’ve covered that day.
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And also what the students have learned, and that’s a very good opportunity to get feedback from them, in terms of understanding what they’ve learned, and how much they enjoyed it. And also whether or not it’s inspired them to pursue either a career in science, or technology, or just to learn more about the particular subject that we were covering that day.

Watch the video of Stella from a STEM Ambassador Hub (a regional coordinator of the volunteering programme) and Adam, a STEM Ambassador, talking about tools to gather feedback from young people.

In the previous activity we identified that young people is one of the groups from whom you could gather feedback.

Tools to gather feedback can include feedback you gather face to face during a STEM activity, orally or in writing or it might be written feedback after an event.

Identify

List the ways of getting feedback identified in the video.
What additional tools, if any, do you use to gather feedback from young people? Share your ideas in the comments below.
Over the next few steps, update the feedback section of your activity plan with any approaches you think may be useful.

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This content is taken from National STEM Learning Centre online course
Volunteering in the Classroom: Feedback, Reviewing and Improving STEM Activities
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Volunteering in the Classroom: Feedback, Reviewing and Improving STEM Activities

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Volunteering in the Classroom: Feedback, Reviewing and Improving STEM Activities

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