Tinkering

Appendix B. Evaluation Questionnaire for Students

We often give evaluation (eval) questionnaires to older students after class group sessions. We believe they help students think back over what they’ve just done and learned. Ideally, they also get practice writing and using new vocabulary. In our experience, few are truly interested in this sort of introspection and reanalysis, and many just want to continue tinkering until (a) the period is over or (b) we coerce them to sit down and do it (You’re not taking your project home until you finish your eval!). There has rarely been a time when we’ve got kids in the free-form tinkering sessions to sit down and do this. I think the internal urge to self-evaluate must come with a bit of age.

We sometimes ...