They say about business that you can’t manage what you can’t measure. But what exactly and how should be analysed in a language school? The best idea is to get feedback from course participants. There are simple ways to obtain feedback that will help you to improve the level of satisfaction from classes.
A survey is one of the basic tools that may help to optimise operations of the school. It can be in the traditional format – of a sheet of paper with answers to be ticked – or online one like SurveyMonkey. When to use the more modern format, that is an online survey? When you run a big language school with many branches, whose students use an Internet platform or receive info and materials at their email boxes. But if a school is small and students use less of modern technologies, it will be easier and faster for you to prepare a survey being just a copied A4-sized sheet of paper.
Both forms of surveys, traditional and online one, have their strengths and weaknesses. It is worthwhile remembering that when a course instructor asks students at the very end of a class to complete a short survey (approx. 5-7 minutes) and immediately collects the completed forms, we can assume that almost 100 per cent of those attending the class will fill it in. But if you send a request to complete a survey by e-mail, you are likely to get far fewer responses – students are busy at home doing other things and feel less obliged to fill in the survey than when being at classes.
Use surveys wisely
A survey is an interesting and effective tool, provided we know how to use it. This is not difficult at all 🙂 We listed below several rules that might help you to create a good survey.
- Define precisely what you want to survey
Don’t ask about general feelings related to language learning, but – for example – how the course instructor is prepared for the classes, if she/he clarifies precisely the students’ doubts, are materials used in the teaching process of adequate quality. Think of what areas you want to analyse and adjust the survey accordingly.
- The survey must be short
A frequent sin of people putting a survey together is that they want to ask all potential questions at the same time. Seeing several A4-sized pages with about fifty questions, students swiftly decide they have no time to complete the survey. And they are right. Completion of a survey related to classes should not take longer than 5-6 minutes.
- Questions need to be precise
Show ready questions to someone who has not worked on them. If they start thinking on any of them longer or inquiring what you really wanted to ask about – you need to change such a question. The surveyed person should be able to answer the questions with ease and fast and not analyse what was is really that you wanted to ask.
- Suggest answers
For most questions you can suggest a set of answers that can be easily translated into scores, e.g.
“Do you think that the course instructor explains the presented material well?
1 – definitely not
2 – rather not
3 – a have no opinion
4 – rather yes
5 – definitely yes”
If you introduce – for example – a five-grade scale , keep it consistent throughout the entire survey.
- Ask an open-ended questions
Of course it is best to limit most questions just to ticking answers, for example from 1 to 5. But put one open-ended question at the end, for example: “What else can we do to make the course more interesting?” Few people will answer the open-ended question, but those answers given can be among the most interesting ones you get.
- Collect and analyse data
You received completed surveys? Do not put them into a drawer but use them. First of all input the scores in a spreadsheet. If course instructors received an average grade for being prepared for classes of around 4-4.5, and one person got grade 3, this means you need to have a serious conversation with such a person.
Archive the surveys – if you make a survey at the end of each term, it can help you to analyse, for example, if a given instructor improves in a given areas or perhaps the trend is rather downwards.
What should you ask course participants about? It is worthwhile checking how students evaluate teachers. First of all, monitor the work of course instructors: if they are punctual, prepared, do they talk in an interesting and comprehensible way. Ask about materials used: both textbooks, movies watched during classes, and e-learning platforms, if you use any. This will help you to learn if those materials meet the student’s expectations. Also check if course participants are happy with the classrooms or school’s location. Well-asked questions and well-analysed answers will help you to avoid a lot of trouble.
Do you use surveys in your school? What have your learnt through them from your customers. Share your observations with us in the comments.