Question boxes in class: anonymous feedback for students' honest views

Some students can't raise their hands in class

Even when you call out "Raise your hand if you have a question," not many students actually do. In a classroom full of watching eyes, thoughts like "I don't want them to think I don't even get this" and "It'd be bad to hold up the lesson" kick in. As a result, some students can't ask questions even though they don't understand, and some can't speak up even though they have opinions.

Here's one possible cause. In a classroom, asking a question itself carries a risk. Worries like "If I ask something this basic, they'll think I'm stupid" and "It'd be embarrassing if my question missed the point" hold students back from speaking up. For junior high and high school students in particular, the fear of showing what they don't know in front of classmates can be stronger than adults imagine.

A question box is one way to ease this problem built into the classroom. Because students can send questions anonymously, no one can tell who asked. Students find it easier to ask about what they don't understand without worrying about the people around them.

Collect questions before class: a good match for flipped classrooms

The day before class, tell students, "Send any questions you have about tomorrow's material to the question box." Students can anonymously send in the spots where they got stuck while preparing. You can check the questions before class and get ready to focus your explanation on the points where many students are stuck.

This method works especially well with a flipped classroom. In a flipped classroom, students prepare in advance with videos or materials, and class time goes to practice and discussion. If you collect questions from the preparation stage in a question box, you can also cover the most common ones in the first 10 minutes of class and spend the rest of the time on practice.

If you keep notes on trends in the questions you receive, you'll start to see whether many students get stuck at the same spot every year. Those notes become material when you look for ways to improve your teaching materials. You'll probably be able to make calls like "I should change how I explain this concept in this unit" without relying too much on gut feeling.

Collecting questions in real time during class

Another method is to put up your question box URL as a QR code in the classroom so students can send questions from their smartphones in real time. This only works if your school's BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy allows it, but give it a try.

At each break in the lesson, check your dashboard and answer the questions out loud. If you introduce one like "I've received an anonymous question. It asks why the discriminant of a quadratic equation is b^2 - 4ac," it should also help other students who had the same question.

One caution: if you allow smartphones during class, some students may use apps other than the question box. To deal with this, set a rule that limits sending questions to specific moments in the lesson (after practice problems, at the end of a unit, and so on). That should give the class a clear rhythm. Rather than letting students keep their phones in hand the whole time, a realistic approach is to set a time limit like "For the next 2 minutes, send in any questions you have."

Collecting feedback after class

At the end of class, tell students, "If there was anything you didn't understand today or want to hear more about, send it to the question box." Right after class, memories are fresh, so it's a good time to collect specific, high-quality feedback.

If you also accept comments on the lesson and requests for improvement anonymously, along with questions, they give you clues for reviewing your lessons. Feedback like "The explanation was too fast to follow," "The board was hard to read," or "I wanted more time for group work" is hard to say face to face. Anonymity makes it easier for students to write what they really think without holding back.

Share the feedback at the start of the next class, saying something like "Here's what came in to the question box last time." Students should then feel that their opinions made a difference and want to send feedback again. Once this cycle takes hold, a feedback loop that keeps improving your lessons might start to turn.

Things to watch for when using it at school

Anonymity is a double-edged sword. At school in particular, you need to think carefully about the risk of a question box being misused for bullying between students or for attacks on a specific student.

Keep Review before delivery turned on; don't switch it off. Inappropriate posts are labeled "Needs review," so you can check the content before deciding whether to share it in class. Tell students clearly what the question box is for (questions and feedback about learning), and make it known from the start that using it for anything else isn't allowed.

You should also understand how sender IDs work. Posts sent from the same network (the school Wi-Fi) get the same sender ID, so on the school Wi-Fi the ID can't be used to identify individuals. However, posts sent from a home internet connection get their own ID, which helps you tell whether repeated inappropriate posts come from the same person.

Explaining it to parents is also important. Some parents feel uneasy when they hear that "an anonymous question service is being brought into class." Explain the purpose, the rules, and how Review before delivery works in advance, and start using it once you have their understanding.