Priya's Batch Ratings

My assistant stands at the door, taps one star from each departing student, so I can see which batches worked best.

Who this is for

Priya Nadkarni teaches keyboard and light vocals from the ground floor of her building in Dombivli. Eleven batches a week, around ninety students, and one assistant, Sunil, who unlocks the room, sets out the stands and shoos the next lot in. The moment that matters is 8.15 on a Thursday, when eight students file past Sunil towards their slippers, and nobody has any idea whether the last hour was any good.

How the job is done today

Priya asks at the door, sab theek chal raha hai, and gets eight nods. Once she made a Google Form and put the link in the parents WhatsApp group. Four people filled it, three of them mothers who had never sat in the class. Mostly she finds out a batch has gone wrong two months later, when a boy stops turning up and his mother says on the phone that he could not keep pace with the others. Sunil actually knows, because he sees the faces coming out, but nobody has ever asked him and he has nowhere to put it.

The screens, in order

1. Door — Opens straight to the batch that is finishing right now, with five stars big enough to hit with a thumb while holding the door open with the other hand.
2. Wrong batch — Lets Sunil switch to a different batch in one tap on the rare evening the timings have shifted.
3. Batch card — Shows Priya one batch week by week, so a slide from four stars to two is visible as a shape rather than a number.
4. All batches — Puts every batch on one screen so Priya can see at a glance which two need her attention this month.

What it keeps track of

• Batches — batch name, which day, what time, roughly how many students
• Sessions — which batch, which date, whether ratings were collected that evening
• Taps — which session, how many stars, what time it was tapped
• People who can open it — name, phone number, whether they can see the batch cards or only the door

The one decision that matters

Should each tap be tied to a named student, or should it stay anonymous. Naming lets Priya ring the one boy who tapped two stars. But finding a name in a list of twelve is a scroll and two taps, done standing, with students walking past, and Sunil will start guessing instead of asking. Worse, a student who knows the star has a name on it will tap four out of politeness. Go anonymous. One tap, no list, nothing to hunt for. Priya loses the ability to chase an individual and gains the only thing that makes the numbers worth reading, which is that they are honest.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out the comment box. Typing needs two hands and a stopped person, and the queue at the door is neither. A batch that drops from four stars to two tells Priya to go and sit in that class next week, which is what she should have done anyway. The words she gets by sitting there will be better than anything a student thumbs out while putting on a shoe.

How you would know it worked

Priya moves the Thursday 7pm batch back to the old warm-up, because she saw the stars fall the week she changed it, and she can say out loud which week it happened.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I teach keyboard and light vocals in Dombivli, eleven batches a week, and I want a small site my assistant can open on his phone at the door. It should show the batch that is finishing right now at the top, and under it one row of five big stars. Every student walking out taps one star, nothing else, no name and no typing, and the count just goes up. If the timings have shifted he should be able to switch to another batch in one tap. Then I want a page only for me where each batch shows its stars week by week, so I can see that the Thursday seven o'clock batch has been slipping since I changed the warm-up, and one page listing all eleven batches together. Only my assistant and I should be able to open it.