Alternatives in Education - Conference feedback

(Conference Feedback Form - responses as filled out by participants)

Please fill and return this form at the end of the conference. Please use the backside if needed.

1. What drew you/your group to the conference?

- Understanding various methods and philosophies of education.

- Interest in educational alternatives and opportunity to meet grass-roots workers.

- Asha’s way of working and ideals. Openness in thinking and working hard to get people together.

- The agenda of the conference.

- Inputs for doing more sustainable work in science education

- Innovative methods used with special groups.

- Need for re-looking at how we incorporate other groups ideas with our own.

- Involvement with AID and exploring the ways in which we can network.

- To understand needs and concerns of grass-roots workers in schools, which we would like to address in our books.

2. Did your experience match your expectations?

- Not fully. The last session should have been utilized to get feedback about the conference and then plan to work together.

- Diversity of experiences was enriching

- Some of the aids were really exciting.

- Much bigger participation and visibility to things happening.

- Understanding various people’s attempts to improve quality of education.

3. How has the conference helped you/your group?

- Knowing various methods we can adopt.

- Understanding groups who are in education field, their work and views

- Possibilities of networking and collaboration.

- Help to initiate new initiatives in this field.

- Improve the work we are doing.

- New ideas for teaching aids.

- Getting to know Asha Bangalore group.

- Increased confidence in our work and assured that problems are typical in our work.

- Opened the possibility of an alternative distribution network for our books.

4. If you/your group made presentations/demos, did you have sufficient time for these?

- Time for philosophy was sufficient

- Lots of groups, so difficult to have longer presentations.

- Not as much as I needed.

- Time was fairly divided but not sufficient for most groups.

- We were not prepared for exhibiting materials related to our work.

5. Was there was sufficient time to interact with the participants?

- Smaller group interactions could have been facilitated.

- Yes, the booklet published was also excellent.

- Participants eager to interact with one another interacted.

6. Please give your feedback on the conference

- Organizing conference around a clearly focused theme was a good idea.

- Exhibition could have gone parallel to the sessions.

- Summertime is suitable for such conferences.

- Each group had 2-3 timeslots where they could share their experiences, which was good.

- Tendency to drift to ephemeral issues. Discussions sometimes went way beyond briefs (which is natural).

- Excellent idea. Should be continued with more frequency if possible.

- Good exposure. Many groups.

- Serious, yet relaxed. Well organized. Meaningful.

- Eager young and old participants come together in sharing mutual respect and appreciation of one another’s work.

- Good summing up.

- Could have had a discussion on working together earlier because most people left after the second day.

- A combined philosophy-methodology presentation by groups where they talk about what is different in their work and what specifically they have achieved.

- Panel discussions instead of group discussions, since the group was large.

- Lot of repetition when talking about methodology.

- Well represented by groups working on large scale, small scale, working within the system and those wanting to work alongside it.

- More attention to be given to judicial use of resources (saving stationery etc.)

- Would have liked people from the special-needs sector to have participated in the conference.

- Opened my eyes to a lot of problems one faces in running educational institutions.

- Networking various groups will strengthen efforts of grassroots people.

- We have to work more on social change and education

- Share the conference with govt. authorities.

7. Please give your feedback on the conference agenda

- Agenda discussed on 2 days was not completed.

- Present status of education system could have been relevant discussion topic.

- Methodologies and actual work first and theory later.

- Agenda was good and well managed. Comfortable.

- A lot of group activity should have been included to prevent monotony.

- Thought-provoking. Not enough time to discuss issues about religious/value education.

8. Suggestions for improvement for the next conference

- A couple of sessions by experts on relevant subjects.

- Presentations could be limited.

- Smaller group discussions with 1 or 2 plenaries.

- Should be action oriented and set targets and goals for Asha.

- More brainstorming sessions. (In the evening.)

- Start with introduction and expectations of the participants.

- Could have invited lots more orgns.

- If possible, group can be smaller.

- Asking people to stay atleast for 2 days so that everyone participates in the concluding part.

- Structure discussions to be specific.

9. Feedback about the accommodation, food, venue and commute to the venue?

- Everything was well organized and good hospitality

- Venue was far from city.

- Accommodation- good. Food - very good.

- Even though venue was beautiful, since no public transport, it was not a good choice of venue.

- Food could have been simpler and cheaper.

10. Any other comments, suggestions, feedback

- Asha should spread ideas to all people working in education field.

- Thank Asha for bringing us all on a common platform with all our varied experiences.

- Newsletter for dissemination of ideas,

- Book on various materials available in the field of language, science maths and social awareness with details of how to make and use teaching materials would be useful.

Top of page