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Matrix Surveys l Question Authoring
l Delivery l
Integration with Enterprise Systems l
Download and Reporting l FAQs l
Flashlight Online 2.0
Matrix surveys (for a
definition and illustration of a matrix survey,
click
here)
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Metadata can be used to determine automatically which questions go to
each respondent pool. For example, for student course
evaluation systems, you can upload a batch of information
about your courses, including metadata such as instructor,
whether the course management system is used, whether the
course is writing intensive, and so on. These metadata help
determine which items are inserted in the course evaluation
for students in each section.
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Metadata can be used to tailor survey content (e.g.,
for a course evaluation survey, the introduction can
automatically include the name of the section and the
instructor, while a question might ask, 'Compared with other
courses you may have taken from [name of this department],
how would you assess this course...")
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Distributed authoring of questions; in course evaluation
systems, the instructor and different offices and committees
can each contribute questions. Meta-data can determine which
questions go to each student.
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If there
is more than one author, each author has the option of
keeping his or her data private, even from other
authors of the same survey. This is valuable in student
course evaluation: faculty are more willing to ask important
questions of their students (e.g., about innovative
approaches to instruction) when they are
confident that student responses will not necessarily
influence their chances for promotion.
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Survey start and stop dates can be managed independently
for each group of respondents
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Pools
can be added to a survey that is already started
(longitudinal studies)
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Many
question types (e.g., rank ordering, pull down lists,
rubrics --
click here to see an example of a rubric in Flashlight
Online 2.0)
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Easy to edit
items by shifting from one question type to another
(e.g., change a list of options from radio button to check
box)
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Create,
manage, search, and share your own item banks and
survey templates (within
campus, across campuses), as well as the
Flashlight Current
Student Inventory (almost 500 validated questions),
the Flashlight
Faculty Inventory, and a
growing library of
peer-reviewed model surveys
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Authors,
or communities of authors, can build and tag item banks
on topics of interest. (""Tag" means to create
metadata to make it easy to find that material.) For example, you could search the
system for all items that someone thought of as relating to
"learning communities" or "technology and hearing
impairment", rewrite items, add new ones, and then tag and
publish your item bank for you and others to use. A la Web.
2.0, Flashlight Online 2.0 is a tool to help communities
help one another carry out inquiry. For more on metadata
used for search purposes, click here.
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Skip
patterns in questions; depending on how the respondent
answers one question, they may skip ahead
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No
restrictions on number of response leaves (e.g. Allow more
than 10 check boxes)
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Tailor the
look and feel of your form, including images and other
materials that can be stored on the web.
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User-defined and
system-defined meta-tags to aid searches for items, forms
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Sharable URL for preview mode
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Test
survey before use without contaminating the data
collected later
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Private
(personal) authoring spaces, group collaborative authoring
spaces
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Many options for
survey response, e.g., a unique URL for each respondent;
for example, email
the respondent a use-once, personal URL
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Email
respondent reminders to complete the survey (on a schedule)
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Even anonymous surveys can
send out automatic e-mail reminders to those who haven't yet
responded.
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Return to survey-in-progress later, even if browser crashes
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Meter shows
respondent their progress through the survey
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Batch input: Create/
manage groups of authors (by upload) and “folders” where
surveys are stored; Manage
author user ID & password by upload in batches [No Single
Sign on using Campus Credentials, initially]
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Integration with campus authorization systems (manage author
groups)
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Style and
branding of survey
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Download/ upload surveys, Item Banks and Templates for
optional local
backup, etc.
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Context-sensitive Help
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Localization of Help (e.g.,
set the system so that some Help buttons lead the author to
the Help desk on your own campus )
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Ability
to upload lists of respondents and metadata about them,
including respondent ID & PIN
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Option to display a report to respondents as
soon as they have completed the survey, rubric, or form
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Distributable authority to download data
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Distributable ability to create custom reports of subsets of
the data (e.g., one group of respondents)
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Reports in Excel (.xls) workbooks or XML (for loading into
SAS, SPSS)
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