My Practice of Using Student Surveys
In the past, I have shared reflections about student end-of-year surveys. You can read about one particular instance of that here. In that example, I shared multiple ways we collected student feedback. We used Google Forms, Padlet, and Flipgrid. I recall Google Forms being my favorite since it creates such nice report products. I hope you find those examples helpful as I believe they are still relevant.
Secondary Level Student Survey Template
I spent most of my library career as a high school librarian. I normally tried to keep my surveys very brief hoping that more students would complete them. These are the prompts I frequently used with grades 8-12:
- The library media center has a warm and inviting climate for our learning community. (Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree)
- The student resources in the library media center serve your needs (both academic & recreational). (Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree)
- The library staff demonstrates good customer service and assists students in a timely manner. (Always, Sometimes, Rarely, Never)
- Please tell us how we can improve our services. (If you should have a complaint, please provide a possible solution).
Elementary School Student Survey Template
I made the elementary-level survey very simple. You may want to add questions to it if you serve older elementary students. Feel free to personalize it as you need! The hard part is done and that is just getting it started.
- Do you like visiting the library? (yes or no)
- Do you like the books and materials in the library? (yes or no)
- Is the librarian friendly? (yes, no, sometimes)
- How can we make the library better? (text response)
You can access my Google Form Template for this survey here.
Outcomes and Reflections
After you email the survey to students or find some other way to get it out to them, what is next? Some of the feedback will be very helpful. Let's face it, some of your students will say things that aren't truthful and/or helpful at all. Don't let it make you angry. It will happen! Focus on the comments that are helpful to you. Sometimes this feedback can be exciting to see while other times it can be a challenge to read. You may have a program or service that just doesn't connect with your students. Maybe they will give feedback that will help you improve it! Sometimes it is best to scrap some programs and start over with fresh ideas. These surveys are an excellent litmus test for how your student customers are feeling about the library. Read the content and take action with good planning.
Should you let your administrators see your survey? That is up to you. Think about how your principal might feel knowing you had gone to the extra effort to create a survey. If you acted upon it after reading the feedback, this shows how you value such student feedback. This is rare for an educator to do. This is an opportunity for you to take the lead in your building by seeking student voices! I always let my administrators view the results. I wanted my evaluating administrator to see the effort I put into the survey and the planning that followed. I think they appreciated how transparent I was through the process.
Again, consider how students will think about you asking for their opinion. Take it a step further than this. What if you implement changes based on their feedback and suggestions for improvement? This will generate buy-in! I hope you will consider going through this process to improve for your learning community. Please, share your survey stories in the comments!
Our Library Student Worker Program
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