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MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS

8.01 Fall 1997

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Feedback Forum Announcement, Fall 1997

Monday, September 29, 1997

As an experimental venture, 8.01 will participate this term in a student-initiated project called Feedback Forum. The goal is to make it easier for you to give us feedback about what is going well, and what is going not so well, about 8.01. The basic mechanism is a Web page through which you can submit anonymous feedback to me and to the class instructors, and through which we can also respond.

The address for Feedback Forum is http://feedback.mit.edu. To use the Feedback Forum, you can point your browser to this address, choose ``8.01'' from a list of options, and provide a password that will be announced in lecture. (Please do not tell this password to anyone who is not a student in 8.01.) Then you can just look around, or you can send a feedback message if you wish. (If you have trouble making contact with the Web page, it may be that your browser is not sophisticated enough to handle the password security built into it. Netscape 3.0 with Java will work, but Netscape 2.0 will not.)

The system is completely anonymous, although you may on some occasions wish to include your name and email address, which would facilitate further communication. The messages will be sent directly to me, and I of course expect to read all of them. If the message pertains to one of the class instructors, then I will forward a copy of the message to that instructor. The messages will not be available to anyone else, except when one of the class instructors or I feel it appropriate to respond publicly to the feedback. In that case both the response and the original feedback message will be posted on the 8.01 Feedback Forum page, and they will become accessible to all students who know the 8.01 password. (If you choose to sign your feedback message, however, you are assured that it will not be posted without first obtaining your approval.)

Feedback Forum was created by and is maintained by Jacob Seid, Andrew Tian, and Simon Lau (all members of Project Negotiation). The website includes a page of ``Frequently Asked Questions,'' and a page of ``Tips On How To Give Effective Feedback.'' I would recommend that you read them both, especially the latter. Please keep in mind that this is an experiment, and its continued use will depend on your treating it responsibly. By all means tell us what you think, but I hope that no one will use it for pranks or jokes.

So, if there are things about the course that you feel can be improved, please use the Feedback Forum as a channel to let us know. If there are things that you like about the course, we would not mind hearing about that, too. We are trying our best to make this course as effective, interesting, and enjoyable as possible, and I am sure that we can benefit from your feedback.

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