Most businesses have adopted the use of comment cards. Comment cards are used to collect customers’ responses to the rendered services. However, comment cards are more common in the service industries than in other industries. A comment card ought to be professionally designed in order to achieve the desired goals (Su 397). In a bid to gather information on the best practice and design of a comment card, this study examines comment cards from six hotels situated in different countries. All the examined hotels are branches of the Star Hotel situated in different countries across the world.
The cards’ size varied from one hotel to the other depending on the budget and corporate guidelines. The questions in the documents were brief, legible, and phrased to avoid wastage of time whilst filling in the questions. The questions in the documents exhibited some similarity as they all attracted a “yes” or “no” answer and they were all intended to acquire information on customer satisfaction. The cards exhibited attractive colors, which were meant to attract the customers’ attention. Sincerity and relevance of the questions was also similar in the documents. The questions posed touched on customer satisfaction and they revolved on the customers’ view of the services provided.
Best Practices of Comment Card Administration
In all the hotels visited, the comment cards were provided to each customer at their respective desks. The hotel attendants provided a brief explanation of the use of the document and assisted the customers through the document.
The cards were in plenty of supply and customers would get extra copies on request. In some of the hotels visited, the documents were placed in guesthouses and other convenient places to allow customers to access them easily. In some hotels, customers were allowed to use both writing and drawings in the comment cards. In one of the hotels visited, the questions posed varied greatly from one customer to another. According to the management, the question depended on the type of service the customer tendered and the relation with the individual customer.
Comment Card Design and Recommendations
Student comment cards are reusable cards used by teachers to pose questions to assess their understanding of a certain topic (Cavanaugh, Heward, and Donelson 403). The use of response cards has shown great improvement in the students’ performance (Miyata 109). Response cards ensure that students learn at an equal pace coupled with reducing emotional and other undesirable behaviors amongst students. Response cards can be used at any level whether elementary or university level. Research has shown that response cards are more effective tools than the traditional way of raising hands as a way of encouraging the students’ participation (Cavanaugh et al. 404).
They are used as tools for appraisal as well as acquiring knowledge on the students’ feelings on the progress of the course. They allow students to answer questions independently, thus minimizing the chances of copying and cheating. The cards are printed in advance with multiple-choice questions or “true or false” answers. In this report, cards with open-ended questions will be reviewed and analyzed in detail. For the students’ cards to work effectively, there should be a well-established external check mechanism. The checks are done under the watch of the management through a management’s card filled by students (Miyata 110).
The management’s card is used to check whether teachers are using the students’ cards appropriately. Therefore, this paper will give a walkover approach to the management comment card that is used by the management to check if the respective teachers are using the cards appropriately.
The cards may be printed in different colors for identification and attraction (Kellum, Carr, and Dozier 101). Just as in the HCC, the cards should be colorful and attractive to motivate students to answer the given questions. A student card should be designed in such a way that it will directly influence the student’s understanding of the lesson (Miyata 112). It should contain closed and open-ended questions that enable the tutor to evaluate the students’ understanding of the topic taught.
The cards should be in plenty supply so that each student has access to his/her own card during every lesson. The questions contained in the questionnaire should be designed in such a way that they attract a “yes” or “no” answer. The questions should allow the students to answer the question. The question should be related to the topic that the tutor is teaching in the session. They should be prepared in advance and presented to each student at the beginning of the lesson. The cards should contain questions requiring direct answers from the student. The cards should be supplied to the students at any time during the lesson and the tutor can go round checking every student’s answer, and thus assess the students’ understanding of the topic.
After the teacher has developed the comment cards, he/she should decide on the appropriate questions using the taxonomy (Kellum et al. 102). The printed cards should be distributed to the students for them to provide answers. The students should be trained on how to use the comment cards before they start answering the questions especially if it is introduced (Kellum et al. 103). A practice question may be developed during the training to help students better grasp the instruction on the use of the cards.
The teacher goes around checking the answers to get first-hand information on the students’ understanding of the topic in question. After the answers have been delivered, the teacher can divide the class into two groups depending on their answers with students with similar answers in one group and the rest in the other (Cavanaugh et al. 406). This way, the student is in a better position to understand the concepts of the topic better through peer reviews. Alternatively, the teacher may select students with different answers at random and require them to support their answers and share their thoughts with the rest of the class (Miyata 114). The teacher can then give the correct answer to the question and give a thorough explanation.
The teacher ought to provide some wait time to enable students to develop well-formed answers (Kellum et al. 104). The wait time also enables students to come up with supporting evidence for their answers, thus leading to a better understanding of the topic. If the wait time does not produce the desired results, the teacher should ask questions such as “why” to enable students to develop evidence for their answers (Cavanaugh et al. 405). This move enables the teacher to note areas of weakness of the students coupled with improving the students’ way of thinking.
A student should not be condemned for giving an incorrect answer, but s/he should be guided on how to answer the questions correctly (Miyata 115). Teachers should use comments such as “good attempt” to students who give wrong answers. Alternatively, the teacher can rephrase the questions to enable students to understand them better. In case this strategy does not work, the teacher may consider reviewing the topic altogether to improve the students’ understanding of the topic. The teacher should spend additional time on the students who give incorrect answers to discover the actual areas of difficulty. The teacher should review the topic in order to refresh the students’ minds.
The questions should be brief and precise for the students to spend more time engaging and thinking. Shorter and regular questions will encourage students to concentrate throughout the lesson and listen to responses from their peers (Miyata 116). It will also enable the students to realize their active role in listening and answering the question as opposed to the traditional style of teaching, whereby teachers would lecture without the students’ interaction. Traditional teachers devoted their time to lecturing on top of answering the questions instead of posing the questions to the students (Kellum et al. 103). This aspect provided incentives for students to remain dormant, and thus it overlooked the importance of students’ engagement in answering questions, which greatly improves the learning outcomes.
Question formulation
The questions posed should be relevant to the topic under study (Miyata 117). They should be purely academic questions. Low-level questions should be minimized to give room for academic questions. Additionally, the questions should be phrased clearly and they should not exceed the students’ answering power. Irrelevant and difficult questions will negatively affect the students’ morale, and thus the desired outcomes will not be achieved. Therefore, a teacher should exercise professionalism and due care when handling the questions and equally when handling the answers provided by the students.
The questions should be formulated in the course of planning the teaching unit in what is known as backward planning (Miyata 118). The teacher should determine the acceptable level of evidence in advance and determine when to pose the questions “why”, “how”, and “when” (Cavanaugh et al. 406). Through the help of Bloom’s taxonomy, an instructor is in a position to develop different types of questions to suit the needs of the session and improve the learning outcomes.
A sample of a student comment card
A sample of a management’s comment card
Works Cited
Cavanaugh, Rodney, William Heward, and Fred Donelson. “Effects of response cards during lesson closure on the academic performance of secondary students in an earth science course.” Journal of Applied Behaviour Analysis 29.3 (1996): 403-406. Print.
Kellum, Karen, James Carr, and Claudia Dozier. “Response-card instruction and student learning in a college classroom.” The teaching of Psychology 28.2 (2001): 101-104. Print.
Miyata, Hitoshi. “Improvement of classroom communication in large-scale remote lecture classes utilising a cell phone-compatible comment card system.” Advanced Technology for Learning 3.2 (2006): 109-118. Print.
Su, Allan. “Customer satisfaction measurement practice in Taiwan hotels.” International Journal of Hospitality Management 23.4 (2004): 397-408. Print.