4 Major Benefits of Incorporating Online Survey Tools Into the Classroom

Everyone who is using social networks should already know what online polls and surveys look like. Most often, these are used by companies, organizations, and influencers to collect valuable data from different audiences. But in reality, these tools can have applications in other spheres, too, namely in education.

Some educators have already discovered online survey tools and started using them in the classroom. And it seems to offer a variety of benefits. In this article, a professional paper writer from a top essay writing service and an expert in the field of education will tell us about the primary benefits of using such tools for educational purposes. Let’s dive in!

1. Improved Understanding of Students’ Needs

One of the most obvious uses of online survey tools in the modern classroom is to use them to create polls and collect students’ opinions. For example, teachers can ask their students:

• What kind of activities/tasks do they like to complete in the classroom;
• What do and don’t they like about the current lesson plan;
• What do they find the easiest and the hardest parts of the subject/lessons;
• What kinds of materials do they like most, etc.

In today’s world, where the gap between educators and new-gen students is getting larger, such polls offer a variety of benefits. First of all, by using them, teachers can create a stronger connection with their students. Students love to feel that their opinions are heard and actually matter, so asking them directly will help build trust.

Also, polls can help teachers better understand the needs, preferences, and struggles of their students. This knowledge can help them significantly improve the quality of every lesson and boost learning outcomes.

2. A Safe Space to Express Opinions

In continuation of the previous points, there is one more benefit of using online survey tools for running polls. When you ask students to reflect on their experiences in the classroom and give a specific assessment of their level of knowledge or satisfaction, not all of them may feel comfortable sharing these thoughts in front of the whole class. Online survey tools enable educators to run anonymous polls or just ensure students that their answers from the poll won’t be made public.

That is, online surveys create a sort of safe space where every student can express their opinions freely without being afraid of any judgment. This will also help build trust between students and educators. Besides, feeling more comfortable expressing their thoughts, students can provide schools with more accurate and valuable data. Later, this data can be used to deliver better learning experiences to everyone and boost students’ satisfaction.

3. Learning Gamification

We bet that everyone has heard about gamified learning already. It has been one of the big trends in the sector of education for quite a while. The reasons for this are many. Firstly, gaming is something habitual and exciting for modern students. Thus, by incorporating games into the learning process, schools can boost students’ engagement. Once students become more engaged in the process, their performances boost as well. A study by the University of Colorado revealed that students who were exposed to gamified learning scored 11% higher on factual knowledge tests and 14% higher on relevant skill-based assessments. Online surveys can deliver the same benefits too.

These days, many educators already use online survey tools to create interactive quizzes for students. For example, they create questions with multiple choices or create sentences with blank spaces that students have to complete to finish the task. Although it can look like a regular test, when you add technology to this equation, it really feels like a game. Students get on the Internet, reply to quiz questions, and get points for correct answers. This enables teachers to implement challenging yet entertaining learning. As a result, students feel more engaged, and their performances improve.

4. Simple Assessment of Students’ Knowledge

Finally, one more way to use online survey tools in the classroom is for knowledge assessment purposes. With the help of such tools, educators can create full-fledged exams to test students’ knowledge and skills.

This approach has two primary benefits. First of all, such tests are interactive and much more engaging than traditional paper tests. As was mentioned in the previous point, this will add a sense of gamification to the process and, thus, make students more engaged. Besides, a different form of assessment can help eliminate exam anxiety, which often makes students perform worse than they can.

The second big benefit is the ease of processing and analyzing the results of such assessments. Different online survey tools offer users a wide range of features for data analysis. With their help, teachers can quickly assess every student’s performance and save time.

The Bottom Line

Online survey tools have been around for quite a while. Still, we can’t say that they are widely incorporated into the academic program, and this is in vain. In this article, an expert in the field of education from one of the best research paper writing services shared with us some of the most tangible perks of using such tools in the classroom. As this technology advances and finds more uses in the education sector, we believe that the benefits it offers will expand too. So there are some weighty reasons to start using online survey tools in schools and colleges right now!