SurveyShare Access and Tips
From CTLpedia
Project Summary: Many faculty and staff need to collect information via surveys. The CTL has several licenses for Surveyshare.com. This article contains general information about accessing SurveyShare, other survey software and tips for creating effective surveys.
Project Goals
- Provide tips for designing, creating, and administering effective surveys.
- Provide information about required procedures for human subjects research
- Provide access to software for conducting surveys to enhance teaching and learning.
Existing Surveys for Evaluation
The Faculty Evaluation Plan provides over 500 survey questions that can be used for various kinds of evaluation surveys. They are available in Appendix D of the FEP document on the district Faculty Association website. http://www.maricopa.edu/org/faculty/fep.html http://www.maricopa.edu/org/faculty/FEP/FEP%20Appendix%20D.htm
Setting Goals for Survey Research
This critical step is often overlooked in much classroom research. Setting goals and referring to them throughout the research will increase the likelihood that your research will be successful.
Examples of using goals to guide survey design...
Do assessments (online quizzes, concept maps, essay exams) affect student approaches to learning?
Survey instruments were developed for each assessment and for the overall course. A pilot study suggested that for each assessment, there should be theoretical constructs of 1) assessment impact on learning, 2) assessment workload, and 3) assessment preparedness/fairness/support. Below is a measurement model for concept maps showing these constructs and the variable names for the questions that define them.
Survey Design Issues
Andrea Buehman has put together an excellent guide to conducting survey research. This guide synthesizes recommendations from many sources and is mostly focused on survey design issues with a bit about administration. It is available at the MCC ORP website.
http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/about/orp/research/MCCSurveyGuidelines.pdf
Human Subjects Research Issues
Any classroom research that you might want to make public by presentation or publication requires that you get IRB/CRRC approval. Informed consent is one general requirement for all human subjects research.
Informed Consent
Must clearly inform subjects of the goals of the research. Elements of an informed consent form include:
- purpose of the research
- procedures involved
- alternatives available if they choose not to participate
- all foreseeable risks and discomforts
- benefits of the research
- time expectations
- payment available if applicable
- contact for more information
- voluntary participation statement
- right to confidentiality and to withdraw
(Adapted from the Human Subjects Research training site for the district at http://citiprogram.org)
Privacy and Confidentiality
Voluntary Participation
Survey Administration Issues
Sampling Issues
Response Rate Issues
Extra credit is often used as an incentive to maximize student participation. This is only allowable when an alternative means of obtaining equivalent extra credit with equivalent effort is available. The alternative ensures that students are not coerced into participating by the impact of extra credit on grades.
Software for online Surveys
for all survey software, we recommend that you draft your survey in MS Word or some other word processor. At best, spell check in survey software is question by question. At worst, it is entirely absent. After you have edited your questions, it is easy to copy and paste them into the software.
SurveyShare
SurveyShare is a server-based commercial product provided by some people associated with the University of Indiana. They provide limited free access to their software (The CTL has several licenses for that we can use to help faculty conduct survey research.
Example survey item types are available on this page. http://www.surveyshare.com/templates/surveyquestions.html
SurveyShare offers a reasonable item bank of questions for several survey types. Unfortunately, it does not appear that they can be combined to make matrix type questions.
Training account: we have created an account that anyone can use to learn about using SurveyShare. When you are actually ready to conduct a survey, contact Donna Gaudet or Brad Kincaid to get access to a more secure account for collecting your data. Surveys can be shared between accounts, so you can save your survey if you have started something good.
Training: username = CTL2007_train password = Train07
SurveyShare offers easily accessible means and frequency analysis with tabular and graphical displays. You can also do crosstabulations of two discrete variables.
You can copy tables and graphs from Surveyshare, and you can download the data in SPSS format, which is a very valuable feature. The CTL maintains several SPSS licenses for statistical analysis of data.
Student Assessment of Learning Gains (Salgains)
This website is provided by the National Institute for Science Education (NISE) at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER)at the University of Wisconsin. It allows anyone to create and administer any number of surveys with any number of respondents for free. Templates can be set up and shared.
http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/salgains/instructor
Offers an optional standard set of evaluation questions AND the ability to add any number of additional questions. The standard set can be deleted to make a totally custom survey.
Additional questions in SALG can be:
1. Multiple-Choice (with any number of labeled responses can be used to create any kind of scale desired)
- choice 1
- choice 2
- choice 3
...
2. How many times frequency...
- Very often
- Often
- Sometimes
- A Little
- Never
3. How much amount...
- A great deal
- A fair amount
- Some
- A little
- None
4. Statement Agree/disagree
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Neutral
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree
5. Do you tango yes/no
- Yes
- No
6. Open ended text response
- text box
Data analysis internal to SALG are:
- Absolute frequencies
- Relative frequencies
- Crosstabs for any two selected questions
- Averages for standard set of evaluation questions
Download of data possible via copy of a data table to a spreadsheet. (Note that these data are not numerically coded, but rather are text associated with each response, which can be recoded most easily in excel or in SPSS.) Spreadsheets can be saved in CSV (comma separated values) format for input into SPSS.
WebCT Survey or Quiz Tools
If you are using WebCT in your course, you already have access to a very powerful survey tool. You can administer a survey using the quiz tool or you can use the survey tool. The main difference between them is that the latter is anonymous.
Data is easily downloaded via copy and paste into a spreadsheet or using the file manager.
Relation to CTL Department Plan Initiatives
- 2006-7 #6 CTL Innovative Instructional Technologies Program -- To provide effective support for teaching and learning with technology, CTL staff must explore, develop and experiment with promising new instructional technologies that have potential to enhance teaching and learning. These activities will allow us to recommend and support appropriate technologies to promote learning outcomes.
Project Staff
- Ann Ewing and Brad Kincaid developed a workshop on survey design and administration.
- Donna Gaudet maintains the Surveyshare licenses.
- Brad Kincaid provides support for SurveyShare.
Project Timeline
Future Directions
- CTL will support faculty using SurveyShare.
Current Status
- SurveyShare is supported by the CTL. Primary contact is Donna Gaudet and Brad Kincaid
Project Resources
- SurveyShare licenses were purchased using experimental software funds allocated to the CTL.
Project Outcomes
- A few faculty have used SurveyShare extensively:
- Madeleine Chowdhury, Maria Chavira, Venessa Perkins
