Survey Tools, Questionnaire Tools
On this page:
What are they?
Survey and questionnaire tools allow you to collect opinions from your students and analyse the results. They will not enable the same depth of response as interviews or focus groups but provide much more usable outputs and so are more appropriate with large student numbers. Most allow several different types of questions including.
- Multiple choice
- Likert scales
- Rating
- Free text entry
There is much useful information in the JISC Effective Practice with e-Assessment publication.
How can I use them with my students?
The most familiar way to use these tools is to collect evaluations after a learning session and to use this information to inform updates, or subsequent sessions. However they can be used in additional uses include:
- Diagnostically to establish student’s knowledge at the start of a learning session and then planning the session accordingly.
- Making answers open to the group and using them as a basis for discussion
Examples
We are still researching examples and case studies for this topic. If you would like to contribute any (whether from your own teaching or from other sources), please contact us.
Where can I get them?
Most VLEs contain a survey or questionnaire tool. Free tools include Survey Monkey.
What else do I need to know?
Writing effective questions for surveys or questionnaires is more complex than it might at first seem and it is always worth trialing a survey before releasing it more widely.
