Explainer
Two axes instead of one star
Why star ratings miss the point
A star rating is outdated, and it misses the point. Its main flaw: one score glues together two different things — how much the student learned and how pleasant it was. A demanding teacher whose students take a lot away, but complain, gets the same three stars as a pleasant, empty class.
An average of stars does not carry enough information to conclude anything from — so usually nobody uses it. More steps on the scale change nothing: the problem is not the number of stars, it is gluing two questions into one.
Skola splits those two things and asks both separately.
What it looks like in class
The student gets a square of twenty-five cells. Across, they mark how much they liked it; up, how much they learned. One tap on a phone, a few seconds, done.
At the end of a lecture or lab the last slide is one lesson QR (make it here). The student scans with a phone and taps the square. No account, no name. Optionally the teacher prints student slips — each slip is a random token for that lesson (one vote), not a login.
The school sets the frequency: after every class, once a day, or once a semester. At a university it is the same, only the class is a lecture.
We do not fill in stars — we tap a cell
Computer Skola has nothing to do with a scrolling list of stars: the student sees a square and with one tap picks the cell that best describes the class. That is the whole interaction — no sliders, no typing.
The same square works on paper. Print it: students stick or pin their stars in the cells that match their answers. The rules are identical, and the finished poster on the classroom wall says more than a table of averages.
We prefer the computer version, because the answer goes straight into a database — and only a database lets you analyze: the spread for a class and a teacher, day by day, patterns that only show up at a distance. The paper version is a good introduction and a fallback for classes without devices.
What the school sees
Answers form a picture you can read at a glance. Color is attitude; height is learning.
The most interesting corner is the top left: I learned a lot, but I do not like it. An ordinary survey will never show it — it averages that signal into nothing. And that is exactly where a principal should look: a good, demanding teacher the students cannot stand, and a class where something bad is happening among the children.
The opposite shows up too — bottom right, where it is pleasant and unproductive.
The result is not one average at the end of the semester, but answers collected as they come. A single bad vote means nothing. What matters is repetition.
Anonymity
Usually the first question parents ask, and they are right to ask it.
Votes have no lasting identifier. Nothing ties one answer to the next, so there is no list you could use to get to a particular student. QR codes can be handed out at random — children can swap them and nothing breaks.
The cost of this is honest and worth knowing: if answers are not linked, you cannot follow one student over time. A version with linked votes is technically possible, but it needs parental consent and a separate legal basis. By default it is not there.
The student does not have to answer. No answer is not a negative rating — no record is created.
What this is not for
This is not a tool for holding teachers to account, and it should not be used that way. The data shows where it is worth asking what is going on — it does not supply the answer. A school that introduces Skola should tell students outright that nobody will face consequences for a critical rating of a class. Without that, the data is worthless, because students will mark whatever is safe.
Status
What you tap on the home page is a demo. The data is sample data — not real student ratings and not a real school. The code is open, so a school or district can run their own copy and keep the data on their side.
Production QR codes and hosting at the school are settled at a pilot — that layer is not here yet. We are not claiming this already runs in schools.
Pilots are arranged individually. Contact: kontakt@weryta.pl