ODBS: Community Research: Survey Function in Moodle

On Demand Book Service

	Community Research: Survey Function in Moodle by Mark Gelsomino - Thursday, 5 February 2009, 10:59 AM
	Okay, I'm online. If any of you guys have had a chance to look over the Moodle survey functionality I'd like to hear what you think of it. Also wouldn't mind hearing what the Systems folks think of it (if you're reading this forum). Reply

	Re: Community Research Forum by Dominika Solan - Tuesday, 3 February 2009, 05:54 PM
	Hey all, Finally got my profile up and on! Excited to meet some YICT's and hear what they think of the project. Did Angie give them a little primer or should we start from scratch (i.e introducing the project)? Show parent \| Reply

Dominika (and others),

Let's presume they know nothing of this project. I can't imagine that they are as up to speed as we are as weekly class attendees. Even for us, the project is in a very early development stage, with not much for them to work with. Remember also that they have no access to Sakai, which is where the bulk of our class's ideas, meeting minutes, etc. are collecting. This may be a great place for us to post our team proposals to share with everyone.

There's my two cents. =)

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	Re: Community Research Forum by Margaret Lam - Tuesday, 3 February 2009, 07:21 PM
	Hi Mark, I'm still trying to figure out how it works. I should have a better idea by Thursday, and we can bounce some ideas off each other in class. Margaret Show parent \| Reply

	Re: Community Research Forum by Mark Gelsomino - Tuesday, 3 February 2009, 07:59 PM
	Mainly I'm concerned with where the survey itself is published. If we can get a feature box on the main page that would be great. I just don't know if we rate front page in the grand scheme of the Knet universe. If we publish on the ODBS Meeting page we may have to do something pretty fancy if we expect uptake. Show parent \| Reply

Mark ... I guess it all depends on what you have to offer in terms of requiring front page coverage. I think it is important to have something of value to offer ... whether it is an online survey or an online workshop or ...

What did you have in mind? We like to think that what is posted on the front page in the Announcement box is something that everyone can gain something from ...

Let me know since I do have some influence on what gets posted on the front page [smiles] ...

Brian

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Ahhhh... so we should get on your good side then...

Our group hasn't decided on exactly how we'll be gathering our data. Since the survey function already exists it's certainly one of our options. Hopefully we'll have that sorted out in the next week or so.

I don't see a lot of white space on your front page, but we shouldn't need to take up too much real estate. I'd hesitate to even ask unless we can come up with something worthwhile. If it isn't something people care about enough to respond neither of us will benefit.

On an unrelated note I can't believe it's minus 27 in Sioux Lookout.

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The joys of winter ... the stars are shining tonite, the moon is bright, the woodstove is filled and I am comfortable at minus 27 ... when it gets close to minus 40 that is when I would rather stay in the house [smiles] with the fire blazing ... I do love the winter time when our mother covers herself with a tight blanket of white snow and sleeps in order to heal and prepare herself for the coming season when new life springs forth all around us and the cycle of life is renewed.

I think it is important to carefully plan your research strategy so you are able to get the information you need from the people who you wish to address. We are working with one doctoral candidate from the University of Vienna who prepared a draft survey tool. After getting feedback from a number of sources; doing an intense review with half a dozen participants and completing another feedback loop, he ended up with a survey instrument that looked A LOT different from what he started with. Originally he thought he would like to get 100 people completing the online survey. In the end, he had over 1200 people start the survey and over 1100 completed the survey.

It will be nice to find out how people in the north feel about library services and books in general. I look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with in this course ...

Brian

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You're starting to change my mind about the usefulness of an online survey.

I wasn't too optimistic in regards to response rate. But if your Vienna student had 1200 respondents... that's more than enough for a reliable sample.

Can I ask where his survey link was posted and how long it was up for?

Assuming we do go with a survey, what sort of value would you and the Knet groups like to see returned?

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Wow, my first instinct was that there would not be enough responses, but 1200 seems surprisingly high to me. I wonder if we could stipulate who we would like the respondents to be, if we are looking to survey a specific group of people. Creating a draft survey, trying it out, and then creating a refined version might take more time than we have, although I think an online survey would still be very useful. I wonder how we could pull this off efficiently.

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	Re: Community Research Forum by Mark Gelsomino - Wednesday, 4 February 2009, 06:49 PM
	Same here. I was initially against the idea for that very reason. Even if we come in with half that many respondents I'll be pretty happy. Our testing may be limited to bouncing our survey off the other teams before going live. We still have to factor in time to leave it up for a while, then to aggregate the data. Show parent \| Reply

	Re: Community Research Forum by Nathifa Grier - Wednesday, 4 February 2009, 07:18 PM
	Knowing that people may be more receptive to an online survey than originally thought is definitely encouraging! Time is also going to be a huge factor. I'm not sure how long we will want to, or be able to, leave the survey open to responses in order to leave time for aggregating, distributing and using the data. Show parent \| Reply

If we use mostly closed ended and Likert scale questions the aggregation should be pretty much automatic.

It wouldn't be a bad idea to have at least one general repsonse or open ended question at the end. You get some really swell responses when you let people sound off in total anonymity.

In my experience, online surveys get a lot of repsonses in the first week and a few in the second. By the third week you've exhausted all the regular visitors.

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Hi
The MyKnet.org on-line survey was very successful mainly because the people who use that application/service are very passionate about it. The survey was posted on the door way to the KNet portal for all to see BUT from experience (being a myknet.org user & promotor approve

approve

) I also shared this survey on my personal homepage because I KNOW a lot of homepage users would go directly to this myknet.org link and not the K-News link. But in the end I think this survey was such a success because the people are passionate about the homepage service that KNet offers.
Finding and targeting the right people for this Library survey you are discussing would be key in finding useful and key information.

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Hey Mark, Margaret, everyone

I have been looking over the two moodle surveys described, ATTLS and COLLES, and I have to say, they are not at all what I expected. The ways they are described ( ATTLS standing for "Attitudes Towards Thinking and Learning" and COLES "an online learning environment survey") just makes me think of poorly worded personality and career surveys I have done in the past! I mean, they seem to be very concerned with the psyche of the participant. I really don't think that our survey would need to be structured this way: We have always talked about asking questions about user needs and wants, pretty straightforward stuff.

I have been trying to figure out how to learn more about these surveys on knet, but am having no luck. I suppose searching other websites will describe the surveys better? Or perhaps, do you think I am misreading the functionality of these surveys? And finally, what are the other three options of surveys (I know, Margaret, you said there were five in total)- could these be more useful for the information we seek?

Cheers!

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Heyya Celene,

I've done a little reading into the basic principles of the two surveys. They may not be suitable in their current state. Maybe we could adapt them to suit our purposes?

They seem to be concerned with how people learn and use online resources. Are we really concerned with people's learning styles?

Brief descriptions:

http://surveylearning.moodle.com/colles/

http://www.scribd.com/doc/10430707/Adding-Interactive-Course-Material-With-Moodle

If not, there's always SurveyMonkey. It may be one step up from those quizzes in Cosmo magazine (not that I read Cosmo) but it's very customizable.

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I think it might be worthwhile to look into adapting the surveys on Moodle, if only because transferring users to another website might turn people off from completing it. I know I'm more likely to not bother if there seems like there might be another step involved... but that could very well be just me!

I am also curious to know if the Moodle surveys are used often. It could be a benefit if people are familiar with that application.

But it is definitely nice to have options!

(and Cosmo can be very insightful... I know exactly what kind of shoe shopper I am!)

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Hi CR team,

To be honest, I am still trying to figure out how to customize the survey questions in any of the formats. All of you have facilitator priviledges (anyone who's in our class), so feel free to play around with that survey tool. To add another survey, simple turn the editing mode on in your administration 'block' on the left hand side, and then click "add activity" and select "survey" from the pull down menu. Add as many and modify the heck out of them to play around with the function.

All the questions raised so far are good questions, and I will do my best to look into them. Perhaps I can do a tutorial and troubleshooting session with any CR members that feel technologically inclined? Two brains are better than one. =)

Margaret

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Nathifa, et al ... I only recall the Moodle survey tool being used once during an online conference. I tried to find the event and the example in the archives but I did not see it listed. It seemed like a pretty basic tool. But that said, I do tend to prefer simple tools and surveys over those long, complex surveys that I have been asked to complete over the years.

So, in following this discussion, one thought that stuck out was ... why not try using the tool to ask a couple of simple questions to begin with around the use of online surveys. Maybe the survey can be something as simple as "Your feelings about surveys" and one question can be ... would you prefer to complete one long survey at one time or several short ones that will appear throughout this course?

This discussion about surveys made me think that the survey tool might be a good way to engage the Youth Workers in this meeting environment and discussion ... that is ... if you get them here in the first place [smiles]. Is it worth thinking about simply trying a one or two question survey that will give everyone some information to work with and hopefully initiate participation in this meeting space by the folks in the north?

I hope everyone "sees" my preference and philosophy when it comes to surveys ... I like the KISS principle ... KEEP IT SIMPLE and SHORT [smiles]

Brian

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Mark et al.,

I've figured out how to customize surveys... it's under what is called the "feedback" option. I have created a sample with all the possible kinds of questions you can have. Go nuts playing around with it. It's very easy to use, and you guys can create your own surveys by yourselves I'm sure!

There are currently around 1100 users on meeting.knet.ca (that's the list of possible people I could 'add' to the group when I go into the admin functions anyway). Presuming half of those people are not active, that makes about 500 people, 200 of which may respond to any surveys we put up here. We should definitely consider other survey functions (Drupal, another system that knet runs on, may give us a lot more flexibility), but think about what advantage there may be to put up a survey in moodle, and what type of survey would be most appropriate (as Brian as pointed out).

Margaret

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	Re: Community Research: Survey Function by Mark Gelsomino - Thursday, 5 February 2009, 07:41 PM
	Thanks for setting that up. I've looked through you mock ups and they look like they have all of the functionality we need. They seem to do just about everything SurveyMonkey does. I'll admit to not knowing too much about Drupal though. Show parent \| Reply

Hi CR Team (and everyone else),

Just as an FYI, I have set all the "topics", except for the first one, as 'hidden'. You can see what I mean by switching your roles to 'member' from your top right corners. (You can't see this unless you are a facilitator, and all students from the class have been giving this setting. If you are new, I may not have gotten to it yet!)

This is a free license for you to create mock surveys to test in any of the topic spaces (you can always create more), and no one will see them except for our class for now. When we are ready to show something to Brian, I can 'reveal' (so can you actually, but if you're not sure, ask me) the survey so that others can review it.

This is a great way for us to manage the 'image' we'd like to present to the KNET community, while allowing us to experiment with functions on moodle, without cluttering it with information that would just confuse visitors! "Less is More" is my mantra.

I will do a quick demo of moodle, and how all our teams can utilize it in the next class, but i got so excited about figuring this out I had to just put it out there. =|

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Hey everyone,

It looks like the CR group is starting to discuss a few prelim questions for a mini-pilot survey just to get the ball rolling on connecting with members of the knet community.

The questions won't be focusing on any specific issues of any of the teams, but will probably be more of a brief exploration on thoughts like: If anyone has heard of the ODBS, and whether anyone would be interested in completing a future survey- that kind of thing.

I personally am finding the instructions on how to post anything like a feedback, or a survey, pretty confusing, but hopefully one of the CR team members will figure it out and we'll have something up soon!

ttys,
Celene

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Hey All,

Do you think we should include a little blurb at the top of the survey that explains/introduces/promotes the project?Something like:

Imagine if you could go to your local school or library and print yourself a book! The On Demand Book Service Project wants to make this happen. Interested? Do you have a minute to spare? Check out the survey. We want to know what you think!

Possible Questions:

1. Have you ever heard about the On Demand Book Service project?
(YES/NO/MAYBE)

2. Would you be interested in sharing your opinion in a longer online survey?
(YES/NO)

3.If you answered YES, would you rather fill out one long survey OR three short surveys?

3. What do you think would be a way to get the opinions of the people in your community who aren't on-line?
(PAPER SURVEY/TELEPHONE CALL/FOCUS GROUP/TELECONFERENCE)

What do you think? I tried to incorporate everyone's ideas...Anything to add?

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	Re: Community Research: Survey Function by Angie Morris - Tuesday, 24 February 2009, 12:07 PM
	Dominika Yes, I like that approach (the blurb explaining your project) Also the way it engages & passes ownership to the individual (who is the one living in the community). It is like they have this opportunity to help bring this helpful resource into their community and not having this shoved in their faces... Angie Show parent \| Reply

	Re: Community Research: Survey Function by Dominika Solan - Sunday, 8 February 2009, 09:16 AM
	Thanks Margaret, for being a super moodle admin! I would be so grateful if you could do a little demo in class, I think it would be time very well spent. Show parent \| Reply

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