Around a week ago I passed out a survey to my class to see how they felt about ClassRealm after it’s first few weeks. For the first three questions had them rate their thoughts on a scale of one to ten. One representing “Not at all” and ten representing “A lot!” I told students to be as honest as possible, I wouldn’t be offended if they didn’t like ClassRealm or felt it wasn’t pushing them.
I added all the scores and then divided by the number of students, which is funny because we are revisiting mean (average) at the moment. Hurray for connections!
Here are the averages
1. I care about ClassRealm – Boys: 9.2, Girls: 8.8, Overall: 9
2. I like ClassRealm – Boys: 8.6, Girls: 9, Overall: 8.8
3. ClassRealm has motivated me to perform better – Boys: 9, Girls: 7, Overall: 8
I can’t really argue with those results. Though girls and boys both like ClassRealm and care about it, it’s not surprising that it is motivating girls less. That being said, my two highest level students are both girls, so I guess it varies greatly. I’ll have more on the survey here in a day or two. Feel free to comment below to say how great this is or how I’m going to ruin education forever. Both types of input help me. Heh heh heh
Wow I’m surprised the numbers are so high! Usually you will find a fair number of students in surveys that both dislike the thing they are being surveyed on as well as ones that purposely mark super low scores.
This is an achievement Ben and really seems to be working out fantastically!
You should also find the mean and the mode for the data. Aside from being a further expansion of the math lesson, mean averages can often be misleading since outliers can inflate or deflate values.
The fact that you did a survey in your class makes me want you to ask them more survey questions, but I can imagine that they might not fit into your class schedule.
Hi Ben! I find the whole ClassRealm idea fantastic, and can imagine it’s great fun for the participating students. Not sure what you mean by this sentence though: “Though girls and boys both like ClassRealm and care about it, it’s not surprising that it is motivating girls less.” Why do you think it’s not surprising that girls are less motivated by the ClassRealm system?
Great question Josien. I guess I should have gone in to more details on that statement. I find that the girls in my class are much more self motivated than the boys. The boys tend to need a push to keep them interested and caring. Also, the girls in my class (not all girls in general) aren’t much in to the fantasy genre. Not many female Twilight or Harry Potter fans in my room, which is surprising.
This being said, I do not feel that all girls will be less motivated to participate in ClassRealm. It will vary class to class. Thanks for the chance to expand on that statement.