Digital Approaches for Gathering Student Opinions in School

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

Digital Approaches for Gathering Student Opinions in School

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” and can be downloaded here. We also published two conference papers at ECER and BERA 2024, see below for more details.