Wicked problems and survey design.

This week, I have been working on my wicked problem: " How can I better support my students with learning challenges as we move towards a competency-based curriculum?"

My school is becoming a certified British Columbia off-shore school, and the curriculum is more competency and skill based. I have been finding that some of the differentiation that I normally use is not working the same as in my previous classes. I want to ensure that I am supporting the ever-growing number of students with ILPs (Individual Learning Plans). To have a better idea of what works and what doesn't, I decided to create a survey to find out more information about differentiation in the classroom.

Figure 1: New BC Curriculum model

Spending time learning more about survey design with Market Research Guy (2020) was a really helpful experience. While the experience of creating my final survey was challenging, with many reiterations and hours mulling over my problem, I enjoyed the fact that the process made me think more deeply about my wicked problem and who might be able to help me. With my peer feedback in hand I reorganized the order of my questions, I reworded questions, then I deleted them and added some back in. In the end I even changed the program I was using from type form to Microsoft forms based on the ease of use and that I could branch (also known in some applications as skip logic) my survey so that participants answered questions based on their response to some of the initial questions. This I think lead to a more seamless and user-friendly experience.

Now to see what data I get...

If teach middle school and are interested in taking the survey you can find it here.

Figure 2: QR code for survey

References:

Government of British Columbia. (2021). Curriculum model [digital media]. Goverment of British Columbia. https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum/overview

Market Research Guy. (2020, July 7). Survey design best practices: How to write a good questionnaire. My Market Research Methods. http://www.mymarketresearchmethods.com/survey-design-best-practices/

Bullock, E. (2025, February 15). Differentiation and Competency based learning [Survey]. Microsoft forms