More Survey Tools: Using Google Docs

Following on from the recent post comparing three survey tools, I thought it was worth mentioning a feature in Google Docs. Google Docs is a free online office software suite and its spreadsheet tool allows you to set up a simple survey very easily. It collects all the responses in a spreadsheet for you. See Darren Drapers instructions if you want to give it a go, and you can look at an example form that took me about a minute to create.

I'll try and compare this with the other 3 tools that we looked at (remembering that it is in Beta testing and still has some bugs).

-Form creation, duplication and management among a large number of people

It is very easy to create simple forms. You're not going to create anything as attractive or complex as FormAssembly allows, but you can create something that does the job in minutes.

Regarding duplicating the form and allowing other people to use it (for example to share a generic end of module survey that someone else might want to use in their course) you can upload a spreadsheet downloaded from someone else's account but it doesn't store the formatting of the questions. This is a bit of a drawback if you want to use this for large generic forms as you'd have to reset the question types.

Google Docs allows you to create a form and invite people to collaborate in its development if you want. There is a synchronous chat tool built in to help collaboration at a distance. As Google accounts are free anyone who wanted to use it could just create their own account and their own forms if that is required.

-Completing the forms

No issues there. The survey creator even has the option of including past answers at the bottom of the page in case that helps or interests the person completing the form.

-Data management and analysis

The data is stored in a spreadsheet which can be downloaded in various formats, or displayed in a chart. Pretty much like the other three services we looked at.

-Financial cost

None. It is free.

-Potential longevity of the service and any other things

Well I'm sure Google isn't going away, and as they are developing the service and everyone seems to be using it, I'd say it has a long term future.


In all, this is a great tool for easily setting up forms. Hopefully the drawbacks (issues when duplicating forms, bugs seen when changing forms that have already been released) will disappear in time.

In my mind FormAssembly is still king when it comes to complex forms that you can take time creating, and Blackboard's Assessment tool is great for end of module surveys because it is integrated into the VLE and you can upload and develop a generic set of questions. Google Docs though is probably the easiest and quickest method if you are wanting to create and distribute a simple survey quickly.

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Spark08 Website: Ways of displaying information on-line

We've finally finished working on the Spark08.com [note that they've made big changes to it now] website for the World Firefighters Games. The idea of the site is to connect with a younger audience (7 – 16 yrs old) encouraging them to explore fire and rescue services across the world and the World Firefighters Games via four national curriculum subjects: History, Art, Geography and PE.

This was a big thing to attempt in the very small amount of time available and while the site is far from perfect I've appreciated the chance to explore various ways of displaying information using various free on-line services. Using these services you can very quickly display information in more appropriate ways, and I've explored how we've used some of them below.


Google Maps: To display information geographically (example)
While you can do very useful and clever mashups using data sources and Google Maps if you have the technical know-how, anyone can use Google Maps to display their information.

Log in using your Google account and click on the My Maps tab. From here you can choose 'Create new map' and easily add placemarks containing the information that makes more sense displayed geographically.

Flickr: For displaying and annotating photographs (example)
We've used Flickr to display a series of photos as a slide show, which also displays information about the photo.

You can create slideshows in Flickr by creating a new Set from the photographs that you've uploaded. When you've done this you can click on the 'View as slideshow' link and link people to the URL of this page so that they can see the slideshow.

Xtimeline: For displaying historical information (example)
This allows you to upload text and related images that are best displayed by date.


Not all of these would be useful for your projects, but they provide a simple alternative method of displaying information that might be more effective than just text. As always when using external services keep a copy of the resources on a computer that you know is backup up, so you cannot loose it all.

Introduction to Online Tools for Teaching and Learning

There are many beginners guides to new web technologies, but I was especially impressed by Jeff Cobb's concise and well illustrated 'Learning 2.0 for Associations', which covers some of those that are becoming mainstream as well as the theory that is often linked with their uptake in teaching and learning.

The document won't take long to browse through, and if you want someone to talk to about how and where you might implement any ideas that you have, contact your local Learning Technology Development Officer. At Edge Hill University your current contacts are:

-Faculty of Health: Adrian Cain, David Callaghan and Lisa Bushell
-Faculty of Arts and Sciences: Peter Beaumont and Carol Chatten
-Faculty of Education: Paul Duvall and Megan Juss

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2008 Horizon Report: Future Technolgies and Trends

It can take many years from the early adoption of a technology until it is realistic for us to use institution wide in a Higher Education context. The Horizon Report (2008 Edition) by the New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative takes a look at six emerging technologies that are likely to see mainstream use over the next few years, as well as challenges and trends that will be faced during this time.

It's well worth having a look at the document - perhaps just go to the sections that interest you if you're short of time. Below I'll look briefly at how each might relate to our context.

Section One: Grassroots Video (1 year or less to adoption)
It is now easy to create, edit and publish video. Most mobile phones have some capability to record video, operating systems come with basic video editing tools and there are many online services that will host video for free. The wide uptake of broadband means that low bandwidth isn't a great barrier to people accessing the video.

All this means that it's becoming more realistic to incorporate video in educational programmes. It might be creating video resources for the students or asking students to create their own videos as part of their learning. As with any data (espacially external services) it is important for both staff and students to keep their work backed up in case there are problems with the service, but that shouldn't prevent the use of the technology.

How could this integrate with the VLE? If the video is hosted externally staff can share links via the VLE and the students can using the discussion tool on the VLE. If you only want videos to be available to the class in question, a service like Ning or eportfolio software like PebblePad make it easy for students to share various media inside a private social network site environment.

Section Two: Collaboration Webs (1 year or less to adoption)
Google Docs is one of many possible examples of web services that enable groups of people to easily work collaboratively on a piece of work, or easily share work. With Google Docs it would mean office documents, but other services allow work on other types of projects.

This collaboration has been something that staff at Edge Hill have experimented with over a few years. Generally it has been collaboration and sharing within a single class using a wiki or social networking site, but there is the possibility for classes studying the same subject at different institutions to perhaps work together. In fact due to licence restrictions with a VLE like Blackboard, an alternative like an external service would be necessary for collaborative work that involved people from outside the institution.

Section Three: Mobile Broadband (2 to 3 years to adoption)
While mobile phones are becoming more powerful and ubiquitous, I think that there is still limited benefit right now from us to try and make large amounts of resources more suitable for mobile devices. Our VLE isn't really designed with this in mind and that is a possible obstacle. However it's time to start small scale pilots (as some people round the institution are doing) and these projects will get people thinking about how we could be producing resources that would be suitable for mobile use. This will feed into larger scale decisions about future directions.

It would be good to hear what people are doing in this area. For example I know Media Development are looking at creating video suitable for mobile devices which could be accessed and used on field trips.

Section Four: Data Mashups (2 to 3 years to adoption)
Data mashups as we know them now still require some technical knowledge to set up. This means that it is not something that everyone can create themselves. However using services like Yahoo! Pipes and Google Mashup Editor they would be achievable for some staff. As we've seen with the other technologies like video, as time goes on tools will be available to make creation even more intuitive for non-technical minds.

The actual use of mashups in HE could obviously involve displaying geographic data on a map, and this is what many users are doing (see http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com). Other uses have explored various ways of visualising data, for example Gregory Chatonsky's Flußgeist / L'attente / waiting (2007) which mixes Twitter microblogs with Flickr images that have been tagged with a word from the post to create quite a hypnotic piece of art.

Section Five: Collective Intelligence (4 to 5 years to adoption)
Collective intelligence seems different to the other things on this list, in that it is less a technology that we might use and more a shift in a way of thinking that will affect us (perhaps whether we want it to or not). Because it is an international thing, it won't be Edge Hill University 'doing collective intelligence', it'll be something much bigger.

However ways in which we could use these ideas could be, for example, getting students to tag (Folksonomy) or write about how they used the books in the library (as well as other resources and experiences that have been involved with their learning). This collective knowledge would show the University and future students resources that would be useful for different tasks and areas of study and would work alongside existing more formal ways of organising information.

Section Six: Social Operating Systems (4 to 5 years to adoption)
This section covers the power of linking Social Networking Site technologies with Operating Systems. Operating Systems currently are focussed on content but not relationships. Social Operating Systems would make it easier to see who created resources, who they interact with and therefore to see other people doing similar work and research. This would enable you to read their work or perhaps collaborate with them. It would also make it easy to discover someone's complete body of work - similar to what some people want to use e-portfolios for.


It'd be interesting to hear from other people about how they see these new technologies and trends affecting us, and how we might best react to them and use them.

Survey Tools: for End of Module Surveys and the Like

We’ve been recently using The Form Assembly for creation of forms for end of module surveys and the like, because the WebCT survey tool was awkward to use.

However with our upgrade to Blackboard, Form Assembly’s re-development and the fact people in the Faculty of Health had been looking at, and are quite keen on Bristol Online Surveys, it is worth taking a proper look at how each of them compare.

We will look at the services from the perspectives of:

-Form creation, duplication and management among a large number of people
-Completing the forms
-Data management and analysis
-Financial cost
-Potential longevity of the service

by comparing re-creating a generic end of module evaluation form.

1. Form Assembly

See the example. If you have time you could make it look much tidier.

-Form creation, duplication and management among a large number of people

Form creation is very flexible, with the possibility for more complex features like conditionally released questions. The import list feature means that it is very quick to create a series of multiple choice questions which have the same replies (e.g. Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree).

Duplication of the form is easy as you can just use an existing one as a template. You can release your form to the public to use as a template, which means if several people at Edge Hill had accounts, they could share generic forms and change whatever questions they might want.

Several people could use one account and email notifications announcing when a form has been submitted can be sent to different email addresses for each form.

-Completing the forms

Very straight forward.

-Data management and analysis

This is affected by the plan you choose. The free plan doesn’t allow you to export results in CSV format, but it does create pie charts to display the results, and these could be printed or saved as a PDF. The paid plans allow export of the data in CSV or XML format.

-Financial cost

Visit the pricing page for all the options, but basically there is a free option where users are shown Google text adverts after submission, a pay as you go (e.g. £5 per 100 responces) and monthly subscription (e.g. £5 for a month/£60 per year). The paid service provides better options for exporting the results but even the free version gives notifications of new submissions by email or RSS feeds.

-Potential longevity of the service and any other things

Difficult to know, but the service has been around a few years and seems to be developing.

2. Blackboard Assessments Tool

-Form creation, duplication and management among a large number of people

The process of creating the questions is pretty straight forward – you create an assessment and then the individual questions. The only slight complications occur because the tool is to be used for quizzes too, which means you get more options that you need.

I could create the questions, but not separate them into sections with a title and instructions for each section as with Form Assembly.

The survey can be exported and shared amongst several Blackboard areas.

-Completing the forms

Pretty straight forward. Can save questions individually or all at the end.

-Data management and analysis

The tool does record your results, creating bar graphs and allowing you to download as a CSV file. However it is made slightly more complex because it is designed for quizzes and so you’ll also get grades given for correct answers, which you don't need for a survey.

-Financial cost

None as we are using Blackboard already.

-Potential longevity of the service and any other things

Created surveys will last as long as we stay with Blackboard. This survey tool cannot be used outside Blackboard for other uses, which limits it’s use.

3. Bristol Online Surveys

See an overview.

-Form creation, duplication and management among a large number of people

The creation of forms and questions is as quick and straightforward as Form Assembly. Duplication is easy as you can use other people’s forms as templates. Also you can create accounts for as many users as you want.

-Completing the form.

As simple as the other two services.

-Data management and analysis

Not used it myself but it looks like you can export CSV files of the data, and it will display results as bar graphs for you. It doesn’t look like there are notifications of submissions, but I might be wrong.

-Financial cost

£500 plus VAT per year for the institution.

-Potential longevity of the service and any other things

As the University of Bristol who created it seem to be using it I’d think it will be a long term thing.

Conclusion

The Blackboard survey tool (now called the Assessments tool) has improved since WebCT CE 4. As it doesn't allow surveys to be used outside of the Blackboard environment, we need to look at other options for the institution, however if you just want to run an end of module survey Blackboard is fine. If you like, download the Generic Module Evaluation that we have been using. If you have access to build your Blackboard area, go to the 'Build' tab, click on 'Manage Course', 'Import' and then upload the file and select it. This will import the questions and survey.

If the institution pays for Bristol Online Surveys you can create/copy something on there and link to the URL of the survey from anywhere including your Blackboard area. This is a good simple solution as long as there is someone in the institution to sort out administration of user accounts. It is academically focussed too, so seems to be developed with the use of research data in packages like SPSS in mind - although I've not looked at this aspect.

If you wanted more complex forms, with conditionally released sections and an RSS feed of results Form Assembly would be the best solution. This creates the best looking forms, especially if you spend a bit of time with it and can have multiple users using the same account, all receiving email updates of submissions for their own forms. It works well for simple forms too and is a very affordable solution.

Out Of Institutional Control

Been reading an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education about Northwestern University closing their own email system. Instead students get their email hosted by Google Apps Education Edition.

This article gets me thinking because often in Learning Technology Development we use similar freely available or relatively low cost services to create learning resources and experiences, or as easier to use tools than the ones available in an all-in-one VLE solution.

The things that we have to consider are:

Extra administration - Students might need accounts setting up (will the process put any of them off from doing this?). Can we support any problems the students have when using the service (the institutional VLE takes a massive amount of time to support just by itself)?

Here today... - How long with the services be around for? Can we back up what is created (for reuse, migration to another system, in case it needs to be shown in the future during an audit). If you created things in a more closed environment (e.g. Second Life) you might not be able to back them up as such. Materials in an environment like this won't have the lifespan of those 10 year old OHP slides that were still in use when I was a student. Is that seen as acceptable by the academic staff who use them, and those in management positions who will be allowing people time to keep creating resources?

This extra work can put people off using technologies, and that's not bad if it means the benefit of using the technology isn't worth the effort. I think some of the best and most innovative use of technologies in Teaching and Learning is done by people who are passionate about what they think can be done, and therefore put a lot of time, effort and focus into integrating it into their teaching. The worst uses of technology are probably by people who are told they have to use something, don't want to or know how to use it, and therefore don't integrate it's use into a larger strategy. There's nothing wrong with choosing to use 10 year old OHP slides over a Second Life meeting area, if they fit in with what you want to achieve.

Social Bookmarking in Plain English

The Common Craft Show have released another video in their Technologies in Plain English series, this time highlighting the power of Social Bookmarking.

Click To Play

The short video, (3.25 min) focuses on Del.icio.us, and simply illustrates how to get started and why you should want to. Another really great video - which is definitely worth watching.

Organise and Protect Your Bookmarks with Zinkmo

A couple of weeks ago my PC crashed and all Firefox profiles were deleted, including bookmarks. This wasn't a massive problem in this case as I'd backed up the most important ones, but I've heard of other people who have had similar problems when using Firefox.

So I was interested when I saw Jane Hart mention Zinkmo on her blog. This is a piece of software that you install on your PC (not Mac) and it allows you to syncronise your bookmarks across multiple browsers and to access them online if you aren't on your own computer.

Now my bookmarks are the same in Internet Explorer, Firefox and accessible online - so I can't loose them again! However I noticed that the software at times runs quite slow - and other people have noted this too, so you might want to wait for the software to develop before you install it?

FormLogix - Online form maker

Whilst helping my son who was frantically trying to get all his ICT coursework finished over the weekend, I came across this online form maker.

FormLogix is an online form builder tool for creating web databases and web forms. It allows forms to be built easily using a drag and drop interface and the data collected can be managed using a simple database management tool.

But the best thing about it is that it is completely free!

The forms can be embedded into a website, blog or even be emailed. It enables a user to easily create web forms and web databases such as: Contact us forms, Feedback forms, Events registration forms, Surveys, online Polls, Invitations...

We have looked at a number of survey and poll tools but I think this is by far the most sophisticated and easy to use.

Visualising Events in Time: SIMILE Timelines

The SIMILE project is based at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of their developments are interactive timelines that you can use to visualise time based events.

This can be used to display historical events. In this example they've displayed the events surrounding the assasination of JFK, and if you have time to play with the code you can create your own variations.

Meg found a web service that uses this technology to help you easily create a timeline for your own web site. The 'My Timelines' service just uses the RSS feed from your web site and supplies you with the code to place a timeline on your own web site. Meg has created one for Cakes, and it allows you to easily view activity on the blog.

It could prove to be a good way of introducing the concept of RSS feeds to people, because it demonstrates how they work in a visual way.