Skip to content

Annotated Feedback Form

Run the Annotated Feedback Form MicroSim fullscreen

About This MicroSim

Three questions, three types, and each one is a trade rather than a preference.

The rating scale is fastest to answer and trivially averageable, which makes it the only one of the three that gives you a trend. "4.1 this week, 3.4 last week" is a signal you can act on. What it loses is every reason — a score tells you something changed and never what.

Multiple choice tallies into a clean count per option, and it is the right choice when you already know the possible answers. Its cost is that it forces a choice: a student who genuinely liked two activities equally has to pick one, and your count now contains a small lie.

Short free text is the only one that can tell you something you did not think to ask. It is also the hardest to summarise across many responses, which is why it is optional and last — a required free-text box at the top of a form is the single most reliable way to reduce your response rate.

Three questions is the length, and that is a decision. A five-question form gets fewer responses than a three-question one, and the extra two questions are almost never worth what they cost in completion. If you want a fourth, drop one.

One pattern worth stealing: the scale question is about the session, not about the student. "How was tonight?" is safe to answer honestly. "How did you do tonight?" is not, and gets you politeness instead of data.

How to Use

  • Click each question for why that type was chosen and what it gives up.
  • Note the order and what it does for the response rate: the fastest question is not last, and the optional one is.
  • Try Quiz Me to practise choosing a type for a purpose.
  • Then count the questions on your club's current form. If it is more than four, that is the finding.

Lesson Plan

Bloom level: Understand (L2) -- explain

Learning objective: Given a question on a feedback form, the learner explains why that question type was chosen over the alternatives.

Before (5 min). Show the club's current feedback form, if there is one, and ask what each question is for. Questions that cannot answer that should go.

With the form (10 min). Read all three annotations. Then pose the design question: you may add one question. Which type, and what does it buy?

After (a session). Run the three-question form for real and look at the response rate. Then try five questions the following week and compare — the drop is usually convincing.

Check for understanding. Ask: "Your average rating dropped from 4.2 to 3.1 this week. What does the form tell you about why?" Nothing — the scale gives you the change and the free-text box is the only place a reason could appear, which is the argument for keeping it.

Embedding This MicroSim

Paste this into any page of the book, adjusting the relative path to docs/sims/ for the page's depth:

<iframe src="../../sims/feedback-form-annotated/main.html" width="100%" height="672" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Specification

The full specification below is extracted from Chapter 24: Tracking Student Data and Managing Club Communication.

Type: infographic
**sim-id:** feedback-form-annotated<br/>
**Library:** Interactive Infographic Overlay (grid-diagram.js, annotation-free poster + rectangular hover zones)<br/>
**Status:** Specified
**Template:** https://github.com/dmccreary/search-microsims/tree/main/docs/sims/feedback-loop-sim

Purpose: Show a sample post-event feedback form with three question types, so a mentor can see why each type was chosen and what it measures well.

Bloom Taxonomy: Understand (L2)
Bloom Taxonomy Verb: explain

Learning objective: Given a question on a feedback form, the learner explains why that question type was chosen over the alternatives.

Image style: Flat mock-form poster showing three stacked questions with their answer widgets

Image dimensions: 1000x600 (portrait, three stacked question zones)

Zones (3 horizontal bands, each with id, label, color, approximate x1/y1/x2/y2 percentage boundaries, one-line summary, and 3 bullet facts):

1. `rating-scale-question` -- color #4A90D9 -- boundaries approximately x1:3,y1:70,x2:97,y2:96 -- Summary: "How was tonight's session? (1-5 scale)" Facts: fastest to answer and to average across many responses; best for tracking a trend over time; loses nuance a written comment would capture
2. `multiple-choice-question` -- color #50C878 -- boundaries approximately x1:3,y1:38,x2:97,y2:68 -- Summary: "Which activity did you enjoy most? (pick one)" Facts: easy to tally into a simple count per option; best when the possible answers are already known; forces a choice even if a respondent liked two activities equally
3. `short-text-question` -- color #F5A623 -- boundaries approximately x1:3,y1:4,x2:97,y2:36 -- Summary: "Anything else you'd like us to know? (optional)" Facts: captures detail the fixed question types can't anticipate; optional, so it doesn't slow down a respondent in a hurry; harder to summarize across many responses than the scale or multiple-choice questions above

showLabels: false (question labels are printed in the generated image)

Interactive features: Click or hover any question zone to highlight it and reveal its full fact list in a detail panel; explore mode only.

Implementation: Interactive Infographic Overlay Guide (grid engine) -- `grid-diagram.js` + `grid-overlay.css` render the three rectangular hover zones over the generated poster image; `data.json` holds the 3 zones per the overlay-grid-data-json-schema.

References