Getting to know students in Week 1

I've been updating the survey I use to get to know students. It's important to me to find out things like what other responsibilities students have, what they want me to know about them and their learning, what other school experiences they have had, and why they are taking my course.

A few resources to share:

1. Paper surveys for students:

Here's my current student survey. Sometimes I ask students to do this for homework, sometimes I ask for them to do it during class. I use the same format for all assignments: title, purpose and directions. If it's homework I add a section for due date before the directions.

Here's my sample response to the survey, which I ask students to read before they complete theirs. I'm using this to show students how I'd like them to answer in complete sentences, and to help them get to know me.

2. Survey online with a Google form:

I also experimented with putting the survey into a Google form, to be filled out online. If I were orienting students to Moodle right away I could put a link to this in Moodle. This looks promising as way to give students practice working online in the course. Here is what that looks like (just the top):

3. Survey online as part of a Moodle orientation activity:

In the past I have embedded these survey questions into a Moodle questionnaire.

This was part of a Moodle orientation activity, so it required students to try out whatever Moodle functions I was planning to use that term. Students might need to send messages to classmates, emails to me, post and reply to forum posts, check their grade, open and read course documents in Moodle and post questions about them, and print something from Moodle, etc.

Here is what that looks like: