Digital Approaches for Gathering Student Opinions in School

Digital Approaches for Gathering Student Opinions in School

Educational Technology

Denise Lengyel Ahmed Kharrufa Rob Anderson

Collaborators Department for Education

Abstract

This project explores digital technology to ascertain student opinion on outside spaces in schools.

Method

We trialed three digital methods (online questionnaire, PosterVote, Sticker Stories) at said local high school and middle school in the North East of England as well as in two schools in the West Midlands.

Takeaways

A research report containing the findings from this project was published by the UK government’s Department for Education.

It is a collaboration between Denise Lengyel and Ahmed Kharrufa from Open Lab and Pamela Woolner and Alison Whelan from the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences, Newcastle University. It is funded by the UK government's Department for Education.

We interviewed teaching and technology staff. And we ran focus groups, using map-based visual methods and drawing, at a local high school and middle school in the North East of England with 18 students from sixth form, year 9-11. Based on this, we trialled three digital methods (online questionnaire, PosterVote, Sticker Stories) at said local high school and middle school in the North East of England as well as in two schools in the West Midlands.

This project helps us to learn what is important to students about outdoor space (likes, dislikes), which technologies the students would like to use when being asked about their opinion (individual, group-based /collaborative discussion, location-based), the barriers and benefits of using such technologies in schools and how students engage with them.

What impact did it have?

A research report containing the findings from this project was published by the UK government’s Department for Education. It is called “Developing a method for obtaining pupil insight for Building in Use reviews: the use and value of external school space”. We also published two conference papers at ECER and BERA 2024, see below for more details.

  • Woolner, Pamela, Ahmed Kharrufa, Denise Lengyel, Alison Whelan and Katherine Clements. Developing a method for obtaining pupil insight for Building in Use reviews: the use and value of external school space. Research Report. 2024. Published by the UK government's Department of Education
  • Woolner, Pamela, Ahmed Kharrufa, Denise Lengyel, Alison Whelan and Katherine Clements. Using Digital Technologies to reveal Student Views of Outdoor School Space: Methodological and Ethical Possibilities and Uncertainties. European Conference on Educational Research ECER'24.
  • Whelan, Alison, Pamela Woolner, Denise Lengyel and Ahmed Kharrufa. Using digital technologies to reveal student views of outdoor school space: methodological and ethical possibilities and uncertainties. British Educational Research Association conference BERA'24.