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questions to ask participants (and things I wish I'd known...)

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Hi all:

I made a short questionnaire that I asked participants to take at the start of the course, and I've gotten an "OK" number of responses (about a third of the total number of participants).  One question I wish I'd asked in the survey was "What times (GMT) might work for you for live meetings?".  As it stands, organising the meetings after the fact has been a bit of a headache.  I also think it could be appropriate to make a questionnaire part of the Sign Up task (and I might do that next time).

saulo venancio's picture
saulo venancio
Sun, 2011-01-30 20:11

i am facing difficulties with time for meeting too. i will try two times per week. if that doesnot work, i will keep motivating them and do the possible. but it is sad.

B. Maura Townsend's picture
B. Maura Townsend
Sun, 2011-01-30 20:59

We tried the whenisgood tool and we are so spread out that it's essentially useless. We have no overlap for more than half the class participants. I'm going to have to come up with some other method.

Amy Donahue's picture
Amy Donahue
Sun, 2011-01-30 21:10

We tried whenisgood, too. I've come up with 2 meeting times that work for all but 1 person in my section; and since I'm one of 5 co-facilitators I'm hoping it's possible that one person might be able to switch to one of the other sections. We're definitely discussing what best practices might be next time, like asking for timezone in the sign up tasks so that we can group sections that way. It might definitely be worthwhile to make even more stringent requirements in the sign-up tasks around availability; it makes sense to me that some part of the acceptance decision is based around that (if meetings are a necessary part of your course; I would posit that that wouldn't always be the case). If no one can make a necessary meeting, then the model won't really work. :(

Joe Corneli's picture
Joe Corneli
Sun, 2011-01-30 22:54

Well (ironically)... I'm glad I'm not the only one running into these difficulties!

Not quite sure how to come up with a "save" but it's a good thing to remember for next time: perhaps even a standard questionnaire around P2PU would help. I think if people aren't going to make it to live meetings we need to really emphasise communication in the forums.

BTW In another course, we've used two different meetings (9AM GMT and 6PM GMT) to good effect, and have had conversations with people from Malasia (AM) to Portland, Oregon (PM).

ozzie sutcliffe's picture
ozzie sutcliffe
Tue, 2011-02-01 23:45

I made up a quick form for the Javascript class, out of 160 odd that signed up about 75 responded to the questionnaire.
So we have a good idea about which time zones folks are in.
The time zone is a part of your profile in p2pu and there was talk about the the time zone of being available to the admins..

oz

Jessica Ledbetter's picture
Jessica Ledbetter
Wed, 2011-02-02 00:03

Timezone doesn't always equate to availability though. We've been using whenisgood to get that. Still might need an availability input form even with timezone.

Joe Corneli's picture
Joe Corneli
Wed, 2011-02-02 00:58

+1

Karen Fasimpaur's picture
Karen Fasimpaur
Wed, 2011-02-02 16:46

Synchronous meetings have not worked well for me either.(Though I got a better response doing a "sign up sheet" for specific times rather than WhenIsGood.)

The forums have been very active though -- for my class, I think this works better, both for participants and pedagogically as well.