Input Wanted: Negative Feedback Policy

Part of the ethos behind eduFire is that we’re not a company that’s simply going to hand down our policies/rules from on high and force our students and tutors to adhere to them. Rather we want to involve each of you in many of the decisions we’re making as we grow this community and service. To that extent I’m posting a couple of threads today related to decisions we’re facing as a company that we would like to get your input on. Through this dialogue I think we’ll be able to reach a much more creative and effective solution than if we were simply pondering this stuff in isolation.

So here’s the next question: What do you feel is the best way to handle negative feedback?

Negative feedback can be left a variety of reasons. Sometimes the student feels that the teacher did a bad job but other times it could be other things like there was a technical glitch, etc. The situation we face is similar to that of eBay in that when negative feedback is left it can look very bad and adversely impact the person who receives it. On the other hand, to have an open marketplace it’s important to have a way for people to report on transactions that were less than satisfactory.

Here are the guidelines that eBay uses:

Resolving Feedback: How eBay does it

I’d love to hear the community’s thoughts on this. Assuming we should allow negative feedback then what’s the proper process for negative feedback to be removed if we allow that? Or do we simply say that negative feedback can never be removed. Should we give the person who has been left negative feedback an opportunity to respond to that feedback.

Please post your thoughts on the matter as having a solid approach for handling this will be a very important part of allowing eduFire to grow. Thanks!

Jon,

It’s a tricky issue. I think eduFire should probably not be involved in judging the merit of specific feedback or determining if negative feedback is appropriate to the situation. I would suggest that all feedback given by students (along with the score) be viewable by the entire community. A teacher would have the right to comment on any feedback given on their profile (and the student can respond back as well). I also like the ebay sytem, where two people can reach a mutual agreement and the negative score can be removed.

I think negative feedback should be resolved directly between the student and the teacher.

If it is a personality issue or a teaching style objection, this should be between those two parties only.

Who enjoys hearing negative feedback…no one! People should always pair up positive feedback with a constructive comment. That way tutors can become better at tutoring online, which is quite different from teaching in the third dimension. I also appreciate knowing ahead of time the specific skills I am about to teach, as that gives me the time to gather resources with which to instruct a student. I spend a lot of time preparing for a session, making sure that technical difficulties are anticipated and hopefully avoided. I also like a session to flow quickly, with resources at my fingertips. It is a disappointment when a student doesn’t appear after all that prepping. But I do have to be reasonable and expect that a student probably has a valid reason for not appearing for their session.

A very tricky issue… Honestly, the first thing coming to me was that negative feedback should be resolved between the teacher and the student only. But this narrows the range of feedback to “from neutral to positive”.
I guess it is smart to let the teacher respond to negative feedback. Otherwise, this could become some kind of a doom. There are certainly students that would not like any teacher’s methods to teach languages. In case their feedback cannot be responded, the possibility to get new students obviously decreases. And the only solution is deleting the account and setting up a new one, which is definitely not desirable in case of successful teaching sessions in the past.
Well, a lot can be written here. Summarizing, I think my position is that whatever the final solution is, fixed public feedback on the page with no possibility to reply to it should not be acceptable.

I think that by not having any positive feedback but the system saying the tutor has had several sessions that could be seen as negative, whereas someone else who has had the same number of sessions and positive feedback from them may be looked at more favorably. But then you have to take into account that some people just don’t leave feedback and so tutors could look bad and not be. I think the ebay system is a good one to follow. But I also think if the issue can be resolved then if eduFire deems it is okay, they should be able to remove the negative feedback.

I agree with Ryan. I like the ebay system of leaving feedback. Let the students write whatever they want and allow the teacher to respond to it. Also, ebay has ways to rate a transaction when you leave feedback. There are about 5 different things you can rate: Shipping, communication, etc.

Seeing that sessions can be pricey for students, they should be given the right to see negative feedback. Or for example, if a tutor is better at teaching beginners as opposed to advanced students, this should be displayed. (On a side note…maybe this should be in the tutor’s preferences so that they only get the level of students they prefer.)

On the other hand I don’t think it is fair for a tutor to get a bad rating if it is just a personality conflict. So maybe the questionnaires could be written in such a way that it is more of a rating on what type of tutor he/she is: good with conversation/good with grammar/ good for advanced students/ good with beginners….

Then a place to give feedback. Ebay does a great job at threatening you quite a bit about leaving bad feedback and I think in general since we are all here to learn, people will be into giving helpful criticism.

I also think, like some of the others mentioned, tutors should be able to respond. It would seem a little weird for tutors to rate their students, so at least they should be able to respond, even if is to good feedback.

After checking out the ebay system I agree with Ryan and Spring. Along with Kim’s idea of letting the two parties resolve their differences with another…in turn resolving negative feedback

Cool everybody! I do agree that the eBay system seems to work pretty well here. Maybe rather than re-inventing the wheel we’ll simply model more of what worked for them. After all, they’ve done pretty well with it. :) Please keep the feedback coming though. I’d like to ensure that we’ve heard from as many different people/viewpoints on this as possible. Thx!

I agree…the ebay system seems to work. If it ain’t broke…don’t fix it.
Maybe there could be a pop-up window after a session that is mandatory for the student to fill out. It could be a questionnaire about the service and the instructor. Maybe 5 questions for the site and 5 for the teacher. So you can get an overall impression of the site and also the teacher and then leave a “comments and criticisms” field at the bottom. That way they would have to leave some sort of feedback…it wouldn’t ONLY be negative and then it would give other students and tutors a general idea of the tutor…NOT just one negative aspect.

I think that tutors should be able to respond to their feedback as well…

Umm…obviously if something is non-constructive…like this teacher sucks or I hated this class…I think it should be removed. If someone is going to comment it should be constructive. “This tutor did not meet my expectations…etc etc”.

Those are my thoughts. :)

Diana

¡Hola!
Ok, after having read all your posts, I think a good idea would be if both, student and teacher could solve their differences. The only problem with this is that there should also be a neutral opinion, and maybe, EduFire could play that role. And, as Christina said: “then if eduFire deems it is okay, they should be able to remove the negative feedback.”

I think any feedback is good, whenever it is constructive, and we all know sometimes a session didn’t work due to technical problems, conexion, etc… Other times, you are waiting for a student and after a lot of minutes waiting, you realize he/she is not going to enter the session. Your first reaction could be: “I’ve lost a lot of time waiting” BUT, if you ask for an explanation, you’ll realize most of the times that “non-appearance” (God! English is so difficult, with all these consonants all together!! haha) was due to personal reasons, like traffic, a problem at home or things like that.

Ok, now, thinking I’m a student looking for a teacher… I think feedback is very important, as the more you can know about a concrete teacher, the best to make my choice, right?

But what about making what Diane said? A pop-up window after each session, with some 5 questions, and, perhaps, to avoid “bad words and criticisms” :-) instead of a space where the student can type, he/she could just click one option among 5, which could be either numbers (1 = worst, 5 = best) or adjectives (very bad, bad, good, very good, excellent)?? Well, this is just a rough idea…

I, too like the idea of a pop-up window from 1-5 for a score, which would expedite the process, along with a pop-up for constructive comments such as: 1- teacher needs to meet my needs for instruction,
2- teacher needs to explain material better, 3- teacher met my instructional needs, 4- teacher was patient, explained material well, and met my instructional needs, 5- Teacher met my instructional needs creatively, and the material was well-explained with good opportunities to practice. There still should be a way to explain that there was a technical problem during the session as well. The pop-up comments would also be more objective. Perhaps a small space for the tutor to comment on a low score would be helpful information for a student who is deciding whether to use that tutor or not. A tutor should not be held responsible when there is a technical problem during a session, for example, and their whole lesson had to be revised so that it wasn’t as enjoyable an experience for the student.

Likewise, a student who had a missed session or a late session should have the chance to explain the situation. It must be a win-win situation.

The more I think about it the harder it is for me to express my opinion because… I have really mixed feelings about all feedback like that. Ebay, amazon – it is necessary, as we buy stuff there, we need to know if we can safely pay money (sometimes a lot of it) etc.
In case of private instruction it is a less risky business – basically the student can loose only the $30 or so dollars but it is not like s/he would not get anything for that – he can just not like it too much, like the food in a restaurant – and it is a different situation in general. It can be worked on, discussed, modified, perfected or the student can just resign of taking lessons by this teacher and Schluss. There are so many students who don’t really know what they want and they really cannot find any teacher who would fit their needs or e.g. style of “I don’t want to learn anything, just put the language into my head”;) These people like to leave a negative feedback.
Advertising on many websites, I have almost always the option of having a feedback. But only students who I have found or taught through this particular website can leave me the feedback. It is not really adequate, as I have a lot of students around, beyond those websites. I have professional and less professional recommendation letters written by my students in a long period of time I am teaching and the feedback option does not give the opportunity to show those.

For this reason, I am not sure if the feedback like here gives the real view on the teacher or tells about his/her skills. I think it should be discussed between the teacher and the student. If the student is serious about learning, the teacher is happy to show the recommendations etc.

But, as the feedback option is a fact already, I think the possibility of a comment to the negative feedback is absolutely necessary, as well as to the positive one. And the pop-up windows idea seams to be interesting, too!

Hey guys. This is great stuff! There’s a lot for us to digest here and please keep it coming. It seems like in general what I’m hearing is that the ability to leave negative feedback is a good and useful thing but there should be some means for rebuttal and/or ability to have the negative feedback eliminated if it is unwarranted. I’d definitely like to keep hearing from you on this as I think it’ll be an important part of our service and allowing new students to best identify who they want to learn from. Thanks!

I am actually very happy with the way ebay handles negative feedback. When someone leaves negative feedback on an account, the accused has an opportunity to input their side/response to the claim. If you see a pattern of excuses you can usually tell who is reliable or not.

Tina

;-) You got it!

Can I give myself bad feedback for flaking on Spring? :( I felt soooo bad.

I agree with what’s been said about a similar idea to ebay handlng of negative feedback, especially having a method of rebuttal or have it removed as you say Jon. Cool.

I finally missed a session the other day with Maritza and felt just horrible. I was so frazzled after my apartment flooded for the third time that week that I totally forgot, and flaked on her. Maritza, I hope you can forgive me. BTW Martiza was awesome when I did get to work with her. Spring is awesome too! Both great tutors!