Moodle in English: Survey Module

Survey Module

by Howard Miller - Wednesday, 28 May 2003, 6:05 PM

What is the state of play with a fully configurable survey module - ie, define ones own surveys?

Is anybody working on this?

I need to do this for another project, so I might as well kill two birds with one stone.

This isn't going to be trivial so I don't want to duplicate somebody elses effort.

Assuming nobody is working on it, does anybody out there have any specific requirements/thoughts on the subject?

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Thomas Robb - Wednesday, 28 May 2003, 8:58 PM

Here are some ideas on features that I think a survey module should have:

Types of surveys:

1) Likert scale questions where the survey maker can select the number of points on the scale from 2 for a simple "agree/disagree" "like/dislike" to up to 10. Some people like to have an even number of points so that people cannot select a middle, neutral point, while others want that.

There should be a provision for a separate "Doesn't Apply/No opinion" selection so that people don't simply choose the middle point becuase the question is inapplicable to them or they don't want to bother thinking about it.

2) Multiple choice questions where the creator can stipulate that only one, or one or more can be selected.

3) Prioritization questions where the respondants can arrange the items in a specific order. (This will also take some fancy report programming to make the results interpretable.

Result reporting

1) The results would have to be presented in an attractive and meaningful way depending on the nature of the item type.

2) The creator needs to be able to stipulate when people can see the results:

a) immediately upon responding
b) after the survey has been closed

3) Respondants should be given a choice of having the results sent to them by e-mail (or a notification of where the results may be viewed) once the survey has been closed.

4) The survey creator should be able to review the results by individual respondant in addition to seeing the overall summary.

5) Additional bell & whistle: Having the results exportable in a comma/tab delimited format readable by Excel and other spreadsheet programs. This would allow people to do cross-tabluations on responses, calculate the signficance of responses, etc. without having to build this feature into the program where it might be little used.

Other desirables:

1) Any one logon ID should be able to take the survey only once.

2) There needs to be a reset capability so that survey creators can pilot test the survey on a small number of people to make sure that the responses conform to their expectations, and then reset it to 0 for the actual survey.

3) A graphic should be insertable on each item in the survey for questions that require them.

Well, this is all that I can think of off the top of my head. I hope it doesn't discourage you too much! Many of the above features can be added slowly once the basic module is up and running, providing that the code allows for expansion.

--Tom

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by P. Timothy Ervin - Wednesday, 28 May 2003, 9:56 PM

It seems to me that most, if not all and more, of this is already included in the Workshop module which I believe is coming along fairly soon.

The current survey (Choice Module) is much simpler and for getting a quick idea of users' opinions works fine just the way it has been set up, in my opinion. About the only option you bring up that I would second is the reset option, but it's fairly easy to do that through the back door using phpMyAdmin.

Moodle is a complex program as it is and I don't think that we should be pushing for making it even more complex (or bloated). Once the Workshop module is completed, I think you will find it can handle your type of "survey" quite nicely.

Just my two yen on the topic.

Cheers,
ptervin

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Howard Miller - Wednesday, 28 May 2003, 9:10 PM

I suddenly have a sinking feeling that a survey is really just a quiz!

Are we not back to something I raised a while ago that it would be useful for grading to be optional in a quiz?

I guess then that a quiz with no grading and no feedback is a survey?

Mmmm … . have I gone mad?

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Thomas Robb - Wednesday, 28 May 2003, 10:14 PM

I just responded based on your query, without having not had time to review all of the past posts. I've just very recently become active on Moodle.

I suppose that the main difference is that there are no correct answers in survey as opposed to a quiz but from a functional standpoint, they might be otherwise identical.

Some types of quizzes, wouldn't be so common in surveys, such as fill-in-the-blanks, but could possibly be used.

Here is what the Blackboard documentation says on this, although I wouldn't want surveys to always be anonymous since they would lose research value in some cases. This should be up to the creator, and of course, the respondents should be told which type it is.

Quizzes:

* grades are recorded automatically in online gradebook
* feedback to students can be built into quiz

Surveys:

* not graded -- student submissions of surveys are indicated by a black check mark
* do not give the student feedback
* will not associate responses with the student -- responses are anonymous

--Tom

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Martin Dougiamas - Wednesday, 28 May 2003, 11:41 PM

No, that's exactly right - a home-made survey is the same as a quiz with no correct answers and no grading.

In my opinion, it would be much more useful to add no-grading and answer-statistics to the quiz module, since then the hard bits (all the question types, import formats etc) will be shared and consistent. There are bugs filed on these two features for quizzes already.

I would much rather the survey module keep it's focus on providing standard, pre-tested, translatable "learning environment instruments". I have always had some thoughts about eventually allowing sites to connect via moodle.com so that surveys can be traded and results can be shared, compared, analysed and discussed from inside the survey report. There still needs to be a GUI for the survey module, but it would be a lot more specific than the quiz module - for instance there is the notion of scales to help even out certain variables. Perhaps to avoid confusion it should be renamed the 'Questionnaire' module (and I promised after readings->resources that I'd never rename another module!)

And of course for really easy no-fuss surveys there is the choice module.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Howard Miller - Thursday, 29 May 2003, 3:53 AM

There's no getting away from those quiz modules!!

Fine then: off to look into switching off grading and (finaly) getting around to import and export of quiz data.

Watch this space

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Przemyslaw Stencel - Thursday, 29 May 2003, 4:32 PM

Just one more suggestion - an open question would be very useful in both a survey (for comments) and a quiz (for long-answer questions).

I mentioned it in http://moodle.org/bugs/bug.php?op=show&bugid=234

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Howard Miller - Thursday, 29 May 2003, 4:56 PM

yes, agreed.

Some simple routing might be a thought too. That is you don't get the "Other" box unless you answer other, and "skip to the end" sort of constructs.

Likely getting ahead of myself

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Wendi Dunlap - Tuesday, 10 June 2003, 9:56 PM

I just looked at that feature request and noticed that Martin thought of it as a journal; I'd like to add some feedback on it. Journal is not really what I want here.

I really, really want to have the ability to have paragraph/long answer questions within a test. I teach HTML, and I would like to be able to ask questions within exams that ask the students to write short bits of code, but as much as several lines long. Short answer isn't suitable for this. I don't want to make them use journals for these questions within tests, because it is confusing to students to take part of an exam in the quiz module, and part as a journal. Looks funny in the gradebook then, too.

In theory these questions would have feedback pre-entered, but Moodle would not grade them; the teacher would manually grade them. The eCollege software does this very nicely. The bulk-grading feature suggested by Przemyslaw Stencel would be REALLY nice and better than eCollege.

Besides code questions, I would like to have students write long text answers to some questions. Right now I have multiple choice, but that makes things a bit too easy. Yet short answer almost never works for the questions I need to ask.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Martin Dougiamas - Tuesday, 10 June 2003, 10:34 PM

Actually, the journal remark was related to a follow up request in that bug.

Long answer questions are definitely still on the map.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Ray Kingdon - Wednesday, 11 June 2003, 4:05 PM

You might consider using the Workshop module. It's slightly artifical in that you need say an example HTML page (could be more than one example). You then set up a number of questions. The students look at the example and answer the questions, each question has two parts a scale and a comment. You come along and grade and comment on their answers. It's basically the first stage on the Workshop module.

I think it may go on and ask the students to submit something themselves but that's something which could be stopped with a tweak.

I also think it would be useful to be able to go around the loop. That is the student sees the teacher's comment and they are able to revise their answers and so on until the teacher "signs off" the student's response by giving it a pass grade. (That's not in the Workshop grade but it's edging towards the todo list

)

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey/Quiz Module

by Thomas Robb - Wednesday, 11 June 2003, 10:21 PM

This is an extension of what I discussed in posting http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=1500 concerning the differences between quizzes and surveys.

In attempting to get the import function for "Missing Word" to use as a survey, I've developed one enhancement to the functionality which I would like to suggest be added.

Currently, the import function allows one to prepare items with multiple choice responses in your word processor for import, but if you want to assign weights other than 100% or 0% to the responses, you have to pull up each item individually after it has been imported and select the weight for each item from a pulldown menu.

If one is developing a survey rather than a quiz, for example, one might want the responses scaled from "Best...to...Worst" and therefore would want point values for each item rather than simply having one "correct response". Very often, each item on the survey will have the same set of choices and it can be a very time-consuming and tedious task to if you have a long list of items.

Here is the current wording of the help screen (first two paragraphs) with my suggested addition in the 3rd paragraph. I have a working version of this (a modified format/missingword.php file) that I can give anyone that would like to try it out.
================================================
Missing Word

This format only supports multiple choice questions. Each answer is separated with a tilde (~), and the correct answer is prefixed with an equals sign (=). Here is an example:

As soon as we begin to explore our body parts as infants we become students of {=anatomy and physiology ~reflexology ~science ~experiment}, and in a sense we remain students for life.

If you would like to specify weightings other than 100% (correct) and 0% (wrong), you may add the percent immediately after the tilde. For example:
This is {=the best answer ~75%a good answer ~a wrong one}
================================================

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey/Quiz Module

by Timothy Takemoto - Wednesday, 11 June 2003, 11:25 PM

Hi again Tom,

I would really like this! Plerase share it with us, on the CVS page or here.

It would be even bette if it were possible to include comments (which are supported by the
moodle quiz module, and database, I presume)

This is {=the best answer/comment on the best answer ~75%a good answer/comment on the good answer ~a wrong one/comment on the bad answer}

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey/Quiz Module

by Thomas Robb - Thursday, 12 June 2003, 10:04 AM

I can't upload CVS modules yet, so I've attached the revised format/missingword.php module here.

I have implemented the comment feature Timothy requested but with a hash mark as the seperator rather than the slash originally suggested. The input format now looks like this example:

This is {=the best answer#comment on the best answer ~75%a good answer#comment on the good answer ~a wrong one#comment on the bad answer}

One lingering problem is that the order of the questions gets shuffled when they are listed under the specific quiz category. Looking at the quiz_questions database I see that the items have been inserted in the table in the correct order, but their IDs have been shuffled. I still haven't found the code that is causing this. Can anyone point out where it is?

Feedback from anyone would be appreciated!

missingword.php

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey/Quiz Module

by Martin Dougiamas - Thursday, 12 June 2003, 10:52 AM

I've just checked this code into CVS. Apart from a little reformatting I haven't really looked closely at it or tested it yet.

The quiz questions in a category are sorted by question type when drawn from the database. Perhaps a subsort by ID would be useful ...

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey/Quiz Module

by Timothy Takemoto - Thursday, 12 June 2003, 11:45 AM

Thanks very much for this Tom. I will use it as soon as I get the chance.

Tim

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by James Griffith - Friday, 22 August 2003, 3:54 AM

I'm new to this conversation and you may have already done the renaming or otherwise moved on...I would suggest renaming the "canned" survey module, but I would'nt rename it to "questionnaire." After all, a questionnaire is simply a type of survey--the very type of survey that this thread is discussing--so it would not succeed in avoiding the confusion.

You might consider giving it a name that reflects the specific goal you have in mind for it--something like, "Learning Environment Instrument" or "Learning Survey Tool." Anyway, it should indicate that this is intended for this narrower scope and is less customizable that another tool available for creating quizzes and questionnaires/surveys.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by AJ Jahan - Friday, 21 September 2007, 3:23 AM

If creating a home-made survey is a lot of work at this time, could you kindly point me to a product that independently can create a questioner; you know something like a SCORM module, preferably with some reporting functions.

Thanks...

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Lopo Lencastre de Almeida - Friday, 13 June 2003, 8:42 AM

Hi,

If you are only desperatly seeking for a Survey program than I sugest you the GPL phpSurveyor.

It's very nice. Very configurable. Very interesting.

"PHPSurveyor is a multiquestion surveying tool that allows you to develop, publish and manage surveys. It includes capacity to generate unique token ids for multiple recipients, manage the participants, track individual responses and to browse, export, and do basic statistical analysis of survey responses."
http://www.hotscripts.com/Detailed/21582.html

If at any time someone think that he/she can create a new module based on this survey program... Well! It's GPL, so he/she can and since Moodle uses modules does who really wish to use it will only have to install it. Doesn't need to be in the CORE of Moodle, I think

Best,

Lopo

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Thomas Robb - Friday, 13 June 2003, 10:02 AM

I agree that phpSurveyor looks good, and since it is basically mySQL & PHP it could fit in well, but I'm sure that it would need quite a bit of reworking to make it fit in with Moodle's database handling and multilingual capabilities.

The author (who lives in the Melbourne area by the way) says that he's looking for people to help with localisation. I wonder if his arm could be twisted to adopt Martin's very elegant scheme for handling this.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Ger Tielemans - Saturday, 14 June 2003, 12:10 AM

I am also looking at phpsurveyor as a candidate for a survey-tool: in the future (2/3 years) I wish me a set of tools ALSO FOR THE STUDENTS, to handle surveys on the web: on this moment phpSurveyor is my favorite.

Other student-tools will be:

Modeling-tools (NetLogo, Squeak)
Concept-mapping-tools (C-MAP)
Collab document creating (a mix of D3E, MyScrapbook and Swiki)
An online video-editor (a product like http://eteach.engr.wisc.edu/newEteach/home.html but then MSN-independent)

Moodle could stay the organizer, I do not see always the need to swallow these tools, sync would be enough. (As in the case of the free C-map-server, or a LDAP/Jabber-chat-server)

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Thomas Robb - Sunday, 29 June 2003, 8:05 PM

I have developed an enhancement of the current quiz module which makes it usable for certain types of surveys. Currently, little data is provided to the instructor once a "quiz" is completed except for the students' total score.

What I have done is to add more code to the mod/quiz/report.php file to permit extra reporting for mutliple choice questions that permit single choices only.

Specifically, you can now get this info in chart format:

1) For each question which choice was selected by each user (shown by an asterisk in the appropriate column).
2) For each question, how many people selected each choice.
3) A display in a User x Question grid with each cell showing the choice of the user for that question, either in text form or (for longer responses) just the number of the response.

I am keen on getting feedback from possible users as to how useful this is and what other features would need to be added to make it a truly useful addition to Moodle.

If you would like to try it, please log on to my own site,
http://www.langconcepts.net/moodle
with user "quiztry" and the same as the PW.

Select "Tom's pilot course" then click on "Quizzes" in the upper left , then select the "Task 1" quiz (which is really a survey), and then click on "View 6 completed quizzes." From there, it should be self-explanatory.

If you would like to try the code on your own site, I'll gladly send you the current script, warts and all. All you would need to do is to temporarily rename your current mod/quiz/report.php file and then upload my version. The program reads from by writes nothing to the database, so should be "safe" to try without endangering the integrity of your current course.

--Tom

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Gustav W Delius - Sunday, 29 June 2003, 8:58 PM

I am very interested in what you did.

However I was too stupid to actually see the info in chart format. After clicking on "Special Reports for Multiple Choice Questions" I get to a page where I can make some choices. When I then press Continue I am thrown back to where I came from (http://www.langconcepts.net/moodle/mod/quiz/report.php?id=14). What am I doing wrong?

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Thomas Robb - Sunday, 29 June 2003, 9:45 PM

Sorry, bad interface design! Click on one of the choice buttons -- Type1, Type2 or Type3.

I'll try to make that more obvious.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Gustav W Delius - Sunday, 29 June 2003, 11:48 PM

I like it!

From the trial on your server it is not clear to me whether only the teacher can see the results from the survey or also the students. It would be good if the students could see the summary but not the replies of named individuals.

Gustav

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Thomas Robb - Monday, 30 June 2003, 7:18 AM

Yes, a student view is a definite possibility.

Before I go too much further with this, though, I would like to find out how much what I am doing overlaps the efforts of others working on aspects of quizzes and surveys so that we can form a master plan rather than simply tacking on our code to the existing module.

Could I hear from other interested individuals who have ideas for what a survey module should do, or who are already working on something? (See my earlier posting in this thread http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=1347&parent=5550 )

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Ger Tielemans - Monday, 30 June 2003, 3:01 PM

I like your extensions, so please send me your improvement (or is it in the CVS?)

I am only missing a graphical view like an answerclass counting histogram. (You could use php-open-source for that?

I also wish me to have my answer plotted against the average/spread of the group, like you can with Martin's survey graphs: I then would prefer that any student can only see his own answer agains the group.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Thomas Robb - Monday, 30 June 2003, 5:23 PM

I'm attaching the current version to this message since I don't have CVS write privileges yet. I still have a few enhancements to make but this is usable as is, I believe.

Concerning a graphical display, this would be a new area for me and I have a number of other projects that I need to tackle first. Perhaps someone with experience in graphical displays would like to volunteer?

report.php

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Sean Keogh - Monday, 30 June 2003, 5:56 PM

nice one, Thomas. That could be very useful for us, certainly.

A report showing percentages for each answer chosen in each question would be useful too, something like:

	A1	A2	A3	A4	A5
Q1	10%	62%	5%	20%	3%

This is an anonymous report, in that it doesn't show individual responses, but it does show us that 62% of the attempts got A2 (which was the correct answer) but that a significant number (20%) chose A4, which is incorrect. This is useful information for the teachers who can then look at the question and answer and see if it could be worded better, and also (and more importantly perhaps) look at the course as a whole and see why a large number of students are getting it wrong.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Survey Module

by Thomas Robb - Monday, 30 June 2003, 9:34 PM

Excellent suggestion, Sean!

I've just implemented it, and in fact, made the percentage the default choice.

I'm attaching the revised file for those who would like to try it on their own installations.

report.php

Average of ratings: -