Here's a partial list of survey templates currently available on Flashlight Online. Templates near the top would typically be used by faculty teaching courses (and therefore faculty support/development staff would find them useful, too). Lower down are templates for departmental and institutional studies. Some of the links below are to password-protected areas of the Flashlight Evaluation Handbook. If you don't know whether your institution subscribes and/or don't know the username and password, click here to see who your institution's local contact is.

How to quickly find a template: On this page, copy the ZS number of the template into the clipboard on your computer. Then log into Flashlight Online. After you get to the template page in Flashlight Online, 'paste' the ZS number into the search function in your web browser to quickly find your template.

1. Getting feedback on uses of PowerPoint or other presentation software in the course.  For more detail from the Flashlight Evaluation Handbook, including a list of the items in this little item bank, please click here. The template is ZS14957.
2. Removing barriers to student participation in online discussion and collaboration. There are about fifty reasons why a student might not participate fully (or at all) in online discussion or collaboration. Many of those barriers are easy to lower, but only if you know whether they're actually affecting one or more of your students. The Flashlight Online template can be used by instructors, teaching/learning centers, and/or IT units to diagnose barriers and help individuals and groups of students collaborate more effectively online. This template, and how to use it, are described in this section o the Flashlight Evaluation Handbook. The Flashlight Online template is ZS43546.
3. Other Course (Classroom) Assessment Techniques (CATs) - Flashlight Online has a growing collection of short survey templates that can be used for quick feedback, often on a daily basis, to improve teaching in classrooms and online. Faculty can get constructive feedback from students on assignments, teaching approaches, ... anything where student observations and judgment can help the instructor make decisions about what to teach next, and how.
4. Evaluation of "clickers" and other forms of personal response system: Template ZS70578 can be used to compare courses using clickers (or other forms of polling) with those that don't; it focuses on the activities and attitudes that PRSs are usually used to promote.  Click here to see the template along with instructions for authors.
5. Technological Proficiency - Self-Assessment for Teacher Educators: this survey, developed by Flashlight staff, was designed for use by education faculty. It could easily be used for studies of faculty in other disciplines. (ZS8125)
6. Gathering data from faculty about easy-to-share ("low threshold") ideas and applications.  The questions are organized around Chickering and Gamson's Seven Principles of Good Practice.  This web page gives the template number and explains how to use it.
7. Mid-semester course evaluation (ZS5640).  User-authored survey for gathering feedback on the faculty member and the course
8. (NEW!) Learning Space evaluation: This chapter of the Flashlight Evaluation Handbook deals with evaluation of learning spaces (physical or virtual/online).  There is also a prototype survey, Template ZS36752 is the first draft of a survey that can be used to evaluate learning spaces. If you improve on it, please send us a copy of your survey and help us upgrade the template!
9. Second Life - item bank for needs assessment and formative evaluation of academic uses.  Second Life is a digital world where people can converse, build things, move through a simulated environment, etc. Quite a few academic institutions are experimenting with whether and how to use this new learning space. A chapter of the Flashlight Evaluation Handbook suggests how to study such experiments; a small item bank on Flashlight Online (Template ZS61936) gives you some questions for your draft survey or interview guide.
10. Course Management Systems - This template (ZS18160) was developed by the University of Missouri St. Louis and passed Flashlight peer review.  Its use (and initial findings) are describe in this case study.  Bottom line: when UMSL looked at two groups of courses using their course management system, one group where faculty used the course web site frequently and the other where the faculty member used the CMS infrequently, many measures of instructional effectiveness were higher in the first group than in the second.
11. Needs assessment for improving IT support for teaching and learning activities - Template ZS62192 is based on a survey we created with Colorado College. This template is designed for a student survey but almost the same questions could be used to create a faculty survey, too. Most of the questions ask respondents to judge whether a specific teaching/learning activity is currently adequately for their needs, whether it deserves better IT support, or whether providing better support should be a high priority.
12. Improving web-based distance learning courses. Evaluating Educational Uses of the Web in Nursing (EEUWIN) student survey (ZS6232).  Focuses on teaching-learning activities important for improving outcomes (e.g., faculty-student contact; active learning) and the role of the web in supporting them.  This survey was developed by three universities working in collaboration with Flashlight staff. It can be used for distance learning in nursing or, with minor modifications for distance learning courses in other disciplines. A subset of these questions make no reference to either technology or distance learning and can therefore be used to compare the effectiveness of a wide range of campus and distance learning courses.
13. Evaluating the effectiveness of online student services.  This survey, developed with Federal support by Flashlight staff and a consortium of institutions in the state of Washington, can be used to gather student feedback on the quality of online counseling, library and other services. (ZS7054)
14. Study of how use of IT infrastructure may be affecting interpersonal interaction (e.g., faculty-student bonding; student-student collaboration) in an academic program. ZS7270 is a draft Flashlight survey; if you have reactions or suggestions please e-mail flashlight@tltgroup.org .This survey was drafted by Flashlight staff as an example of a program review/improvement study focused on a particular type of learning activity. It could be used annually to track whether evolving uses of technology in a program are steadily enriching interaction among students, faculty and people outside the program.
15. Confusors in discussions about assessment.  If you're working on assessment-related tasks with others (e.g., training, testing programs, accreditation, student course evaluation, cost analysis, faculty tenure criteria) you may find these templates useful in avoiding accidental arguments.  For example, people might start arguing about assessment because they're unaware that one of them is using the term "learning" to refer to an activity, while the other is using "learning" to refer to the outcome of that activity. These two templates ask people to define six terms that are often used in discussions of assessment.  Template ZS62098 asks the respondent to write their own definitions, while Template ZS62098 offers multiple choices among definitions.
16. Identifying Frequently Made Objections (FMOs) to "Assessment."  If you're working on assessment-related tasks with others (e.g., training, testing programs, accreditation, student course evaluation, cost analysis, faculty tenure criteria) you may find this template a useful tool in helping people discuss their concerns with the activity.  Use of this template (ZS61934) is discussed in the Flashlight Evaluation Handbook.

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