[quote=“brian”]
A blacklist of bad schools, and more importantly a greenlist of good schools can be found at buxiban.com[/quote]
I found this link is out of date, so I started a new one: top100.pebblefoot.com. If you can email me and give me the name of your school, I’ll put it on my list of “Top 100”. See link below. Thanks.
contact at pebblefoot dot com
I hope you find this helpful.
I was trying to get some more information on this, but unsuccessfully. There’s no indication how the “rankings” are made. The list of names might be useful to someone I guess though.
I’m looking for a new bike. Global Village looks like the place to start.
I think the rankings might be automatically generated by the survey that is linked at the site. right now I think the rankings are useless other than providing a name list of the chain buxibans in Taiwan. but I guess if they ever got a big enough sample it could have some value.
Thanks for all the great feedback. We’ve had to adjust the ranking system somewhat. It’s still not 100 percent tuned in. Any input would be appreciated.
Originally we were looking at marketing the idea by having the managers/owners of schools themselves get involved. From this approach we got little response. As you can see, we fell way short of the 100 schools we were hoping for.
We figure there are a couple good reasons for this. Schools may not want their name on the list, out of fear they will be ranked low. This could be a lack of confidence. But when you consider the number of schools in Taiwan, being in the top 100 would not be bad at all.
Currently, the system is set up on number of votes only. We want the teachers themselves to get involved. The more you vote for your school, the more you have a chance of winning. Again, any input on this approach would be great. Some of the questions in the survey carry more weight than others, but we can’t tell you which ones. 
The idea is to create a fun and positive way to encourage more schools to try to impress everyone. Also, the site should be a helpful resource for teachers looking for jobs.
Although 2010 is almost over and we’ll have to close the competition soon, we expect many more schools and teachers to get involved in the next year. Please tell everyone you know to vote! Thanks for your support. (Each time you fill in the survey counts as one ‘vote’.)
Because of the nature of the competition, we can’t ask the schools for financial information. So we can’t rank schools based on pay to teachers or how much revenue they generate. For example, although Global Village pays less than Hess, they are ranked above Hess right now.
If you look at the survey, you will see it is oriented toward the teachers’ general impressions about their school. If you think any of the survey questions should be changed, let me know.
Currently, we are going with ‘2010 Golden Bicycle Awards’. How does that sit with you? Obviously, '2010 Golden Harassment Awards" won’t fly! :roflmao:
If you type, "top 100 cram schools in taiwan’ in Google, we hold the number one spot. So we expect the response next year to be much bigger.
I see what’s going on, now. That’s a nice idea, asiaeast. I would suggest adding a little more description at the top of the site to explain what’s going on and how the ranking system works. The obvious weakness is there is no way of telling if those completing the survey are teachers or not, but with the anonymity of the virtual world there’s no way around that. In general it looks really good to me. Good luck.
I’d take issue with a couple of the questions on the survey. For example, I don’t think that providing teachers with lesson plans makes for a better school (which I think is what you are getting at). In fact, I’d argue that the opposite is true. Also, just because training isn’t provided doesn’t necessarily mean that a teacher will feel ‘lost’ in a classroom. Rather than talking about ‘training’, which is usually bloody awful when it is provided, I would ask a question about whether the teacher is regularly professionally observed. Much more important, IMO. Nit-picking, though.
[quote=“tomthorne”]I see what’s going on, now. That’s a nice idea, asiaeast. I would suggest adding a little more description at the top of the site to explain what’s going on and how the ranking system works. The obvious weakness is there is no way of telling if those completing the survey are teachers or not, but with the anonymity of the virtual world there’s no way around that. In general it looks really good to me. Good luck.
[/quote]
Me as well.
I guess I would try to term it as less of a competition and more just for information. The other problem I see is that the top schools have reputations far worse (on the internet) than actual working conditions. but I find it very hard to believe that the top schools are the best in Taiwan. Most of the time they are considered an acceptable place to start but that you should move on to a better school once you are established in taiwan. My school is near the top and I’m moving on.
I can’t remember the survey completely but shouldn’t there be a ‘what is your overall satisfaction at your school (1-10)’? Because as tom suggested what you might consider to be a bad thing might actually be a good thing because of the other support/structure a school has.
Have you thought of making a web site more like this:
greatschools.org/
It might be more useful to really show what schools are like.
I voted for TONS of those schools on the list. I’ve never been a teacher though, or worked at any of the schools I voted for. Or even heard of them. I also noticed that a supposed “school” called “Canada” is top of the rankings. Way to GO! Not.
Time will tell how well it works out I guess. If the noise outweighs the signal it should start becoming pretty apparent in the mid-term.
It’s fairly easy to filter out the bad data. If he’s never worked at a school, he can’t answer the questions correctly without guessing:
For example, if 100 teachers from Joy tell me they have training and books, and then one person says they don’t have training and books, the data from that person can be ignored because it doesn’t match the overall profile of that school.
It did make us realize a couple of things, though. Previously, we had listed most schools by only one name. So a name like “Canada” would be confusing. Now we are expanding the list to include two words per school name. If you look back at the list, you will see that “Language Canada” really is a school.
Also, including a link to the top schools will give you more access to information. :discodance:
Thanks for all the input about the survey questions. To keep the survey consistent, we can’t change any of the questions right now. Next year we are considering using scaled answers, where you can indicate your preference on a scale of 1 to 10. This will also make it easier to calculate the results.
Another question: How often should we pick a winner? Because the end of the competition is approaching, we are seeing a spike in responses right now. We think that next year most people won’t vote until the last minute. We might see 11 months of silence and then get a flood of votes in the 12th month. So we are looking into having the competition twice a year, four times a year, or even once a month. Mostly we think once a month is too often and once a year is too seldom. What if we track who holds the top three positions each month, but then only hand out the awards once a year? The final winner would be the school that receives the most votes each month.
If the ranking is just by voting, how do you filter the votes? What’s to stop the owner of a crap school voting a 100 times and then getting the office staff to vote a 100 times. Even if all the teachers think it’s a terrible place to work, the school will still be rated number one because they have so many positive votes from the boss and office staff.
asiaeast wrote
If you do this, maybe you’re throwing out the one real response from a teacher and accepting the votes from all of the Joy school owners.
I’m still not seeing why this is a competition since that only increases the chances of getting dishonest responses.
One thing that I would find worthwhile instead of automatically ranking the schools according to the survey is to have an overall satisfaction number that the teacher puts and a text box that they can enter comments in.
Despite all the obvious potential flaws, it’s still a nice idea by the OP and could provide a helpful guide.
I agree with Abacus about the risk of running it as a competition, though.
It might also be an idea for the OP to add all the schools he knows of instead of getting teachers to add them. This might increase the number of teachers completing the questionnaire.
Richmond have got 5 bicycles 
.
Yeah, the OP is definitely going to have to try to filter out the jokers.
It’s fairly easy to filter out the bad data. If he’s never worked at a school, he can’t answer the questions correctly without guessing:
For example, if 100 teachers from Joy tell me they have training and books, and then one person says they don’t have training and books, the data from that person can be ignored because it doesn’t match the overall profile of that school.
[/quote]
How do you know those 100 people are teachers and not shills employed by Joy to boost their numbers? How do you know that the one pissed off teacher isn’t the only ACTUAL teacher who has answered your quiz? The whole thing is just silly. If I was in the teaching business, about the LAST place I’d look for input would be some anonymous Internet so-called “survey” by a supposed teacher, who might or might not be a disgruntled sacked employee and whose figures might or might not be padded up the wazoo by school owners and their employees.
[quote=“Gilgamesh”]
If you do this, maybe you’re throwing out the one real response from a teacher and accepting the votes from all of the Joy school owners.[/quote]
Keep in mind that the answers are weighted. If a teacher says he/she doesn’t like his/her school, but he/she answers correctly to the other questions (number of teachers, number of students, etc.), then that answer isn’t discarded. Some questions tell us if the person really works there and others tell us the person’s opinion.
[quote=“Abacus”]
One thing that I would find worthwhile instead of automatically ranking the schools according to the survey is to have an overall satisfaction number that the teacher puts and a text box that they can enter comments in.[/quote]
That’s a great idea. In 2011, we will include a drop-down box from which you can pick the school, instead of having to type it in. Right now, we have too many variations: Hess, Hess Educational Organization, Hess International, etc. Too many logic statements in the spread sheet make me a little crazy, if you know what I mean!
When it comes to satisfaction, we’ll put a range of 1 to 10 and you can pick how much you like/dislike different aspects of your school. From this we can figure out typical indifference curves.
[quote=“tomthorne”]Despite all the obvious potential flaws, it’s still a nice idea by the OP and could provide a helpful guide.
[/quote]
Thanks! One nice thing about this line of discussion is that it’s getting more people (like myself) to think about what really makes a great company or not!