|
Capabilities and
Limits |
Paper Survey |
Typical Online
Survey System |
Flashlight Online 1.0 (105+ user
institutions) |
Flashlight Online 2.0 (testing began Oct.
2005; release expected by Fall 2006) |
|
Starting points for
surveys: system has collections of validated items and peer-reviewed surveys
for use in studying and improving education |
No |
No |
Yes |
Yes, and the BeTA Consortium will develop and
peer-review more item banks, surveys |
|
Supports groups of
survey authors in different institutions who want to do similar surveys and
then pool or compare data |
No, single user |
No, single user |
Yes, system is
shared by authors at 100+ institutions so sharing surveys, data is easy |
Yes (and with superior reporting and sharing
mechanisms) |
|
Provides forms for
writing your own questions |
No |
Yes |
Yes – 5 types of questions |
Yes – 14 types of questions |
|
Supports ‘tiered
surveys’ (e.g., institutional questions common to all surveys plus questions
from other authors that each go to only some respondents) |
No |
No |
No |
Yes: in addition to College and Department
level questions, permits faculty to ask questions unique to their own courses
and keep the findings private, even though other questions are providing data
to other authors |
|
Supports author
privacy – in tiered surveys even the other authors won’t see responses to
your questions (e.g., faculty member writing questions for her own students
as part of end-of-course evaluation) |
No |
No |
No |
Yes |
|
Supports
end-of-course evaluations |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Yes –Many relevant features In addition to
those above, upload course enrollment, track who responded (to give extra
credit) auto-reminders, multiple authors, user privacy, ability to set
different start/stop dates for different sections, etc. |
|
Ease of
administration |
Varies |
Varies |
Yes – runs on
external servers so no internal administration, no user software |
Yes – can run either on external server or
(as open source software) on the institution’s equipment. |
|
Inexpensive to use |
Data entry can be quite expensive |
Varies |
Yes – a single
subscription allows any faculty member, staff member or student to get an
authoring account at no extra charge; unlimited surveys; unlimited
respondents |
Yes – a single subscription allows any
faculty member, staff member or student to get an authoring account at no
extra charge; unlimited surveys; unlimited respondents. Open source option will also be available. |