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Documentation for Flashlight Online 2.0 l
Additional tutorials for using 2.0
l Flashlight Evaluation
Handbook (how to do productive studies)
This page has gateways to four
alternative ways of learning to use Flashlight Online 2.0.
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Prefer participating in live
online workshops? check the
calendar button
above for the next scheduled session, and
click here to
see an outline of a typical workshop.
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Want to see Flashlight
Online, step-by-step, but at your own time and place?
Watch this archive of a step-by-step training session.
Session 1
teaches the basics and demonstrates the new features
introduced on February 6, 2010.
Session 2 teaches how to create and use matrix surveys.
Each archive is about an hour long.
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Prefer using a handbook with
detailed written instructions?
Click here for the documentation for the Skylight engine
that powers Flashlight Online; it's taking shape on
a wiki and gets better every week.
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Or, like many of us, do you
prefer to sit figure out Flashlight Online by using it?
That's what this page is for. Whenever you feel puzzled,
look at the list of issues below, and find the answer. The issues below are listed in the approximate
order in which they might be encountered as you log-in
and begin creating your first survey, rubric, ballot or
other online form. If you can't find your question,
contact us at flashlight <at> tltgroup.org; we'll create
a tutorial to demonstrate the answer and add it here as
quickly as we can.
NOTE: Washington State University
frequently upgrades Skylight, the survey engine that powers
Flashlight Online. That's the good news. The not-as-good
news is that each upgrade creates the possibility that one
or more of the tutorials below will become a little
out of date. If you notice a confusingly out-of-date
tutorial, please email flashlight at tltgroup.org so we can
update it. Thanks!
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My password has stopped
working. What do I do?
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(NEW!)
I just logged onto
Flashlight Online for the first time in awhile and it
looks different than in January 2010. Where are my folders?
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Explain
the survey list (home) screen
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How can a Flashlight user (or
a community of practice) share surveys, rubrics and
other online forms?
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(NEW!)
What folders of
Flashlight surveys, rubrics and item banks are
available?
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In
the "Properties" tab, what are "Description," "Goals"
and "metadata"? (e.g., how do I write the
introductory page to my survey, the page respondents see
first before they see my questions)
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How
do I start writing questions?
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What kinds of
questions can I write?
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Show me how the
"Questions" interface is organized.
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How do I copy questions from an older
survey (e.g., Flashlight Online 1.0) into Flashlight
Online 2.0?
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I'm looking for a button (e.g., copy,
paste, reorder) but can't find it
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Show me how to
reorder pages, questions and elements.
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How do
I use Question Groups to create a Matrix Survey?
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How do I tailor the text for
each different Respondent Pool?
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Where is
the URL for my survey? What is a "respondent pool"
and how do I create one?
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Uploading respondent pool and respondent emails from a
spreadsheet; unique
URLs for each respondent; one-time use surveys
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Where
are my responses (data)?
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(NEW!)
I'm supporting or
leading use of this tool at our institution. What can I
do to encourage and support more users?
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Known Problems with Flashlight Online, including bugs
Many people like to learn how to use new
technology on their own: little or no use of training,
manuals, etc. If you're one of those folks, this page
is for you. Go ahead and use Flashlight Online 2.0 to
create a survey: each time you
get stuck, glance down this page to look for the answer.
If you don't see what you need below, send an email
to flashlight @ tltgroup.org immediately -- describe where
you're stuck; we'll help you, and we'll add a new note to
this page.
If, on the other hand, you prefer a
single demonstration showing how to use the system to create
a simple survey,
click here to see an hour-long archive of an August
20, 2009 training session, demonstrating and discussing how
to create a survey, step by step. Here is the
hour-long second session, showing how to create a matrix
survey. Here is the
home page for that
workshop, including resource links.
On February 6, the Washington State
University development team made a major upgrade to Flashlight Online 2.0. There
were
three major changes in the system, as
this video demonstrates,
as well as some minor tweaks:
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Because the password authentication
system was changed (moving off the Washington State
Friend ID system -FID), you had to reset your
password. You could use the same password, or
alter it. (However, the new system does not demand the complex
password that the WSU Friend ID system did.)
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The look of the Survey list (directory)
display changed almost completely. A pull down menu near
the top controls what you see below: a list of folders
and a list of surveys.
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A new question type has been added: an
advanced rubric.
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Surveys (and rubrics, item banks, and other
online forms) are visible from the Survey List page (the
first page you see after logging in). So are the
folders in which you can store surveys.
Finding what you need: The
rather subtle view chooser (labeled "Current Folder," right
under the "Surveys" button near the upper left corner of
your screen) is where you control which folders, or which
surveys, you're seeing. Unlike some other programs,
Flashlight Online displays only surveys but not folders, or
only folders but not surveys. So choose your view.
To create a new folder, use
the view chooser to select one of the folder choices (e.g.,
"all folders" or "my folders") and then click the Create
button. Use the properties window to write a description of
the folders purpose or content (very useful when you choose
to let others share this folder.) Use the sharing
button to authorize others to share your folder; from the
Survey List window, you can see the sharing button to the
far right of your folder.
To create a survey,
first click on the folder in which you'd like to permanently
store the survey and its data. Then click the "create"
button. TIP: There is no
"move" command so, to move a survey from one folder to
another, you need to copy it (this copies the survey, not
the data), paste a copy into a new folder and then, if you
want, delete the original.
To copy one or more
surveys (to paste later into some other folder, for
example), click the box beside its title(s) and then click
"copy". Then highlight the folder where you want to put
copy. Then click the "paste" button.
To delete one or more of
those surveys or folders, click their boxes and then click the
delete button.
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If you have ever used a system such as
Google Documents, the principle is similar. Any
Flashlight user can create a folder or a form, and then
grant any other Flashlight users specific rights to see and
adapt it. You can even do a search for other users by their
email addresses (e.g., if you are at Siwash University and
have student course evaluation template that you want to
share only with your colleagues, you can search for all
users with siwash.edu usernames, and give them all access.)
For a step-by-step demo
of sharing, click here.
NOTE: If you try giving someone access to a
folder and receive the error message, "One or more of the
email addresses you entered did not match any of the
accounts in the system," it's likely for one of three
reasons:
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No user can be given access to a folder
until after he or she has logged into Flashlight Online
2.0 at least once. (It’s not enough to get a password
successfully; the user also has to log into the system).
Until that point, Flashlight Online doesn’t recognize
the user so any attempt to give that user access to a
folder results in the error message you saw.
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Check to make sure that is no typo in
the email address.
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Many people have more than one email
address; if they create their account using email
address #1 as their ID, and someone else tries to give
folder access to email address #2, that same error
message will result.
NOTE: The Flashlight Program
would like to assist communities of practice that want to
share rubrics, surveys, item banks, and other online forms,
so that participants can build on one another's work:
disciplinary research, education, business applications, ...
Please email flashlight at tltgroup.org for details.
"Description" is the material that will
appear on the first page of your survey, before the
questions: explanations, persuading your respondents to
think about their answers, telling them what you'll do with
their data.
"Goals" is a field that only you and other
Flashlight users can see; this is where you should keep
notes about what you'd like to accomplish with this form.
"Metadata" describing the entire survey is
only partly implemented as of Fall 2009. Flashlight
Online is scheduled to get a "Search" feature that will allow
authors to search for surveys and other forms online by using words and phrases.
You'll be able to search your own surveys and also surveys written by other authors, even authors at
other institutions. By labeling your own surveys using
metadata here, it will be
easier for you and others to find them later on. (You can
also 'tag' question groups and questions.)
Create a survey by clicking the "create"
button on the right side of the Survey List screen (the
screen you see immediately after logging in). Name your
survey. Click the "Questions" button and you'll see the
Questions interface (the survey editor). Click the
"new question" button near the bottom of the page. Pick a
question type and fill in the form. Then save.
When you're first starting to use Flashlight
Online, try creating a dummy survey and use every question
type at least once, just to see what they each can do.
Here is a sample survey containing every kind of question
and rubric that you can create using templates in this
system.
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A
question group
is the smallest chunk of content that some of your
respondents will see and other won't. (If, at some
point, you want some people to see a part of a question
group, but not the rest, then divide that group into two
groups.) Traditional surveys have only one question
group; everyone gets all the questions. Matrix
surveys usually have two or more question groups so that
different groups of questions go to different people.
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A question group can have
one or more pages.
(You might want to use multiple pages in order to reduce
scrolling.) You can easily reorder pages within a
question group.
TIP: If you don't give each page a title,
your respondent will see "Untitled Page" at the top of
that page. As you finish writing your questions,
use your web browser to search for "Untitled Page", to
make sure that you given every page a name. If
you want respondents to see a blank at the top of a
page, put a space in this field.
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A page can contain one or
more questions.
You can easily reorder questions within a page.
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A question can contain
one or more elements.
You can easily reorder elements within a question.
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Open a
browser window for 2.0 and size it so that it takes up
roughly half your computer screen. On the other half, place
the original survey (e.g., browser window for 1.0 or other
web-based system; word processing file). Then copy the
question, one chunk at a time. It's easier and faster than
you might think, as this
5
minute video demo shows. For more information on
making the switch from Flashlight Online 1.0 to 2.0,
click here.
Buttons only appear when they can be used.
For example, if you have copied a question but have not yet
copied an element, you'll see a paste question button but no
paste element button. If you have only one page in your
survey so far, you will not (yet) see a "reorder pages"
button.
Buttons almost always appear above the
material to which they apply." "Create new question" appears
at the top of the last existing question on that page.
"Create new page" appears at the top of the last page in
that Question Group.
"Create" and "reorder" buttons appear on the
left, while the editing and delete buttons appear on the
right.
TIP: Looking for a metadata
button? At this writing (January 2010) you need to click the
"Question properties" button in order to enter metadata for
that question. Metadata for survey as a whole is entered on
the "Properties" page for the survey.
Because Flashlight Online is
a matrix survey system, you can choose
different subsets of questions for each pool of
respondents, depending on who those folks are. Suppose your
department or college is using Flashlight for course
evaluation; you can send different questions to
lecture-intensive courses and to labs. Or enable the writing
program to send programs about writing assignments that go
only to 'writing intensive courses.' Empower the technology
department to add its own questions about clickers only to
classes that used clickers. Doing research on health care
statewide? Send different sets of questions to people in
each zip code, asking only about nearby health care
facilities. Each person may see a different mix of
questions (just like a statewide election) but it's all one
big survey. Read this web page,
and then watch the video linked to the bottom of
that page to see how it's done.
How to: Each time you
write a question group, you have the choice of whether or
not to tag it with metadata (a key and a value, separated by
a comma, like this: key:value or activity:testing. If
the question group has no metadata, all respondent pools
will see that group of questions. Each time you
create a respondent pool, you also have the choice of
whether to add metadata. IF the respondent pool is
tagged with, say, "activity:testing" and one of your
question groups is tagged wiht the identical metadata, THEN
that respondent pool will see that question group (along
with any other question groups that aren't tagged.) TIP:
To add metadata to a
question group, click "Edit
Question Group" on the right side of the screen.
TIP: At this writing (March
2010), question groups cannot yet be reordered easily. So,
if you're doing a matrix survey with question groups, plan
them in advance, including the order in which the questions should appear to your respondents.
If you change your mind later about the order of the groups,
you will probably have to create a new survey and paste your
questions into it in the new order.
Sometimes precision can be increased by
using different language for different respondent pools. For
example, instead of asking students in different classes a
question about 'the last assignment', supply the name of
that assignment, tailored for each course that you survey.
Or if you want to ask to ask a question about the
instructor, include the person's name (many courses have
more than one person in an instructional role).
Here's a video showing how to do it.
A respondent pool is simply a set
of people who all get exactly the same form: same questions,
same wording, same everything. In a traditional survey,
there is only one respondent pool because everyone has the
same experience. (Even in surveys with skip patterns,
everyone has the same form.) In contrast, Flashlight
Online offers you the option of creating any number of
respondent pools for the same survey: in other words,
authors can decide in advance that different sets of
respondents will get different mixes of questions, and/or
different wording of the survey. In addition, respondent
pools make it easier to break a large group of respondents
down into subsets, which can be analyzed separately, in
clumps, or all as one pool.
To create a respondent pool,
on the home page of your survey, click the button on the
left that says "Respondents." that takes you to the
"Respondent Pool List." Then click the button that says
"create" and fill in the form.
Creating a single public URL for
everyone in that respondent
pool: begin by defining (creating) that
respondent pool. From the "delivery type" menu,
choose "Single Public URL." When you click 'create', it closes
the pool form. Double click on the name of the pool to reopen the form. A tab saying "URLs" now should be
visible on the right side. Click that URLs tab to see the URL is for
that respondent pool. Or, if you'd like to see or share a
version of the form that can be filled in without actually
accepting data (great for getting a review of your draft),
choose the preview url.
Creating a unique URL for each
person in the same respondent pool: Unique URLs are
used when a) you have an email address for everyone in the
pool, b) you'd like to send reminders or other messages only
to people who haven't responded, and/or c) you need to
prevent people from responding more than once.
Flashlight Online emails each respondent a unique URL that
only they can use, and that they can use only once. To do
this, create the respondent pool and choose the "email
personal URL" delivery type. Click the "Create" button
(which will close the respondent pool window). Reopen
it, and you'll see a tab on the right labeled "Respondents."
Click the "Add" button and a window will open into which you
can paste or type their email addresses. (HINT: paste all
the email addresses at once, in one long column.) The click
"save," which closes the window. To send the unique URLs to
your respondents, go to the respondent pool list (if you're
not already there), and click the box to the left of each
'unique URL' respondent pool you need to notify. An X will
appear in the box when you click it. Once that's done, click
the "message" button above the list of respondent pools, and
follow the directions to send your email.
The answer to all those
questions are the same: you create respondent pools using
the "email personal URL" option as the delivery type.
In order to use this option, you need to have a working
email address for each of your respondents. By inputting
these email addresses, you can:
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Tailor each person's
experience (even making elements of the survey unique to
that individual)
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email the person the URL
for his or her survey
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email the person
reminders about the survey (with the option of sending
follow up messages only to people who have not yet
responded)
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maintain the anonymity
of the data (even though you know the group of people
who have responded)
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prevent respondents from
answering more than once. Each person can partly fill in
the survey, come back later, reopen the URL and complete
the survey. But once they have clicked "Finish," their
URL will no longer work.
This
good set of step-by-step instructions was developed by
Cherie Dodd of Indiana University Kokomo. Similarly, this
11 minute eClip demonstrates how to create one
or more respondent pools with a unique URL for each person,
and how to send emails to some or all of those people.
And click here to see
how to do a batch upload of data that defines all respondent
pools and respondents in one step, by uploading a
spreadsheet that includes all the information about your
respondent pools and respondents. Use the first technique if
you have only a few respondent pools; I'd use the
spreadsheet approach if I had more than 4-5 pools.
On your survey's home page, the "Reports"
button leads to all your data. The custom report
feature allows you to pre-design a report or set of reports
you might want to create each time you repeat use of your
survey.
TIP: If you'd just like to
see, or show, a quick report on one respondent pool, go to
"Respondents" instead. The blue 'rate' button for each pool
is linked to a report on responses from that particular
pool.
TIP: The quick reports (for
the whole survey and for each respondent pool) are on the
open web. Send the URL to anyone and they'll be able to see
the data in their browser, even if they do not have
Flashlight Online accounts. Put that URL in the "Finish URL"
field (for the whole survey or for a respondent pool), and
that set of respondents will see that particular report as
soon as they click "Finish" on their survey. If they
bookmark the URL, they can return and see responses from
people who responded most recently.
TIP: Did you test
your survey but then not see any responses in the report?
The most common reason for this is a glitch related to
browsers. First the author creates a 'preview' of a
survey (which doesn't accept data). IF the author then uses
the same browser for the URL for the real survey, the
preview will show up again - the URLs are quite long and
most browsers do an autocomplete and open the preview, not
the real survey. So, when the author inserts some
phony responses to test the real survey, the responses
aren't recorded, and the report is empty. Solution: use a
different browser (or quit, and then restart the browser):
this should enable the real survey to open and be tested.
Flashlight Online 2.0 is going to develop
steadily over the next few years. Programming time at
Washington State University is limited so not all bugs can
be fixed quickly.
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Users will be unable to delete unwanted
surveys or folders until sometime in summer 2010, when
those commands will be reenabled in release 1.3.08.
The delete button is still there but it has been
temporarily disabled. As originally implemented, the 'delete' command was too
easy to use accidentally, deleting surveys and data
unintentionally.
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Flashlight Online is a web-based
system and can take time to react to commands. If
you issue a string of commands one after another (e.g.,
deleting several different 'leaves' in a survey
question, one after another) and you issue a second
command before the first has executed, the system can
give you a warning message. If that happens, save your
work, leave the survey, and then reopen it.
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Some features are not yet implemented,
including reordering question groups, copying whole
pages of questions, search, conditional questions
(branching; skipping), and validation of answers
(requiring that an answer be supplied in order to turn a
page).
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