Using Moodle Surveys

The Moodle survey module includes a set of questions installed in Moodle; you can't use it to create your own surveys. Moodle developers took care to install prepared, standardized survey instruments for teachers to use. The questions have been designed for use with online learning environments particular for educational purposes. If you want to create your own surveys, you can use the quiz tool as a questionnaire, which I discuss in Chapter 11.

Choosing the right survey

Moodle offers three types of surveys. Counting slight variations, you have five options when choosing a survey:

• Constructivist On-Line Learning Environment Survey (COLLES): This survey is made up of 24 statements asking learners about how they think the course is relevant and useful to their studies. It asks learners to comment on the interactivity nature of the course and involvement of other learners and the instructor. Moodle splits the survey into three different types:
  • • COLLES Actual: Ask learners how they're currently interacting with a course.
  • • COLLES Preferred: Asks learners how they think they would like to interact with a course.
  • • COLLES Preferred and Actual: Combination of the two with questions from both how they're currently interacting and how they would like to interact.
• Attitudes to Thinking and Learning Survey (ATTLS): This survey is based on how learners interact in a collaborative environment and apply it to online learning. The survey aims to measure the interactive nature of the course.
• Critical Incidents: This survey presents learners with recent events related to their online learning experiences and asks them to answer questions about how they relate to events.

Creating a survey

The actual procedure to set up the survey in your course is relatively simple because it's predetermined. All you need to do is choose the survey, a set of predetermined questions you want to use, add the introduction/explanation in the edit text box, and you're done. To add a survey to your course, follow these steps:

1. Click the Turn Editing On button in the top-right corner of your course front page.

   The front page changes to show editing tools, allowing you to change the appearance and add functionality to your course.

2. Select Find Survey from the Add an Activity drop-down list from the section in your course where you want to administer the survey.

   Moodle takes you to the Adding a New Survey page, shown in Figure 7-11.

3. Fill in the survey Name, which is a required field.
4. From the Survey Type drop-down list, choose which of the five Moodle surveys you want to administer.
5. In the Custom Intro text box, explain the purpose of the survey and how you want to use it with the course.

   Also let your learners know they'll be able to see the results.

6. Choose the Common Module Settings as you would when you set up any Moodle activity

   See Chapter 3 for a rundown of the Common Module Settings.

7. Click the Save and Return to Course button.

   Moodle saves your settings and returns you to your front page.

To view the survey, select it by clicking the survey name (next to the icon) on your course front page. When a participant completes the survey and submits it, Moodle returns a Thank you [name] message and provides a button to return to the course front page.

Figure 7-11: Adding a survey.

Administering and managing surveys

Surveys will not take you too long to administer and manage. They are self-contained, and Moodle has tools enabling you to download the data into a spreadsheet or plain text file.

When selecting the survey from the front page, Moodle takes you to the summary of your results. See Figure 7-12.

Figure 7-12: View the survey results in graph form.

In the top-right corner of Figure 7-12 is a link that informs you how many people have completed the survey. Click that link — it reads View [number] Survey Responses — to see a summary report with five links in the upper left, as shown in Figure 7-13, that allow you to view the data in different formats and download the data. The following list details your choices:

• Summary: Takes you to a Moodle page that shows the survey responses against the average.
• Scales: Shows you a graphical representation of scale responses for the question type.
• Questions: Demonstrates all questions and student responses.
• Students: Lists the student, including a link to his profile and the date and time he completed the survey.
• Download: Takes you to a page with three buttons enabling you to download the data in three different formats: ODS, Excel, and Text. Select the format and click the appropriate button.

Figure 7-13: Survey report.