Using Canvas to post unique NSSE survey links for students

[MG458913]

Is it possible to do this?  See the attachment?  Essentially it is posting a unique link to the NSSE on Canvas to each student that has a Freshman or Senior Standing.  Please see the attachment from NSSE.     We have a deadline to indicate interest by October 15. 

Thanks

Marci Grant

SWOSU

[kona]

MG458913, we've never done individualized survey links within an LMS, so I'm not sure how it would work. Given the technical nature of this question, I'm going to share it with the Canvas Developers​ and Canvas Admins​ groups to see if they have any recommendations.

[MG458913]

Thanks, I have emailed our CSM and he looked into it also.

[kona]

Let us know your CSM comes up with anything!

[MG458913]

He said to ask the admins to see if they know of a work around.

[kona]

MG458913, did you ever figure something out for this?

[Stef_retired]

MG458913, since we haven't heard from you (and since your October 15 deadline has long since passed), we're hopeful that you were able to devise a solution. I'll mark this question as "Assumed Answered" for now. If you have a moment, please drop by and let us know how you addressed this.

[zweifel]

We are new to Canvas this year and also need to POST surveys for the NSSE survey.  Did someone ever figure out how to post a unique link to a survey for each student taking it?  The above says 'assume answered'.  But I don't see any post that explains how this was done.  I would appreciate knowing if there was success last year.  Thanks.

[Stef_retired]

I've taken the "Assumed Answered" designation off the discussion,  @zweifel  (the assumption was based on the fact that the original poster's deadline of October 15, 2015 had long since passed). I'll tag MG458913​ here again to see if she can let us know how she ultimately addressed this.

[Robbie_Grant]

MG458913​,

Were you able to find an answer to your question? I am going to go ahead and mark this question as answered because there hasn't been any more activity in a while so I assume that you have the information that you need. If you still have a question about this or if you have information that you would like to share with the community, by all means, please do come back and leave a comment.  Also, if this question has been answered by one of the previous replies, please feel free to mark that answer as correct.

Robbie

[gs899]

Hi ,

This thread is a bit old. But we are trying to the same thing...post unique survey links for students in canvas using the NSSE template. NSSE says it can be done in Canvas, Blackboard and Moodle. There is documentation on how to do this in Blackboard. But I can find none for Canvas. Has anyone done this in Canvas? If so how

[bgibson]

My boss is wanting me to find what other institutions are doing with this.  I went to the WikiSpaces site, yesterday, and put my 2 cents in, "Why isn't there an NSSE LTI for Canvas";-)  Seems if you can put students in a course site, and have an LTI authenticate them to a 3rd party site... and that site even be able to send back info (this person has already taken the survey), then an LTI might work here.

My other route was to see how/if Canvas can send targeted messages to users, and if so, how can I do that "in batch". 

[gs899]

Bill Gibson,

This is like a mail merge kind of function...not an LTI kind of integration.

Basically the goal is to send specific students a unique personal  link to complete NSSE survey.

The solution is quite elegant in Blackboard , where only certain authorized students see a block of content and click on in to get served a unique link to the survey.

In Canvas the solution is a like a mail merge marketing email, here each student get an message in their canvas inbox with a message and an unique URL to the NSSE survey.

If you send me a message, I will send you information on how other schools have done this in Canvas. But for sure in Canvas you need a developer to develop a batch process using the Conversation API of Canvas and then executing the batch process.

[jenn_stevens]

Same question as the above!

NSSE says that they'll provide a file of individualized student survey links, IT staff is solely responsible for posting them, it is very important to post each link accurately, and NSSE will not discuss any technical specifications.

• The examples on their website only have one institution that puts the link in the LMS (Ball State), and it looks like the general link, not an individualized one.
• Their presentation powerpoint sends you to a wiki that has no information on Canvas integration.
• The wiki does have info on the Blackboard integration, and it seems to be possible only by writing a custom theme for Blackboard.

Has anyone does this successfully? I'm assuming that it involves custom javascript?

[kmeeusen]

Hi  @jvickers  and MG458913

One thing you might want to consider since this does sound very important, is to contact Canvas Professional Services for help through your CSM.

We had a problem awhile back with a much needed integration that was not really an integration at all, and we needed a similar link added to every course. Their services are reasonably priced.

I hope this helps,

Kelley

[gs899]

I am hoping someone who is employed by Instructure answers this thread.

This is not a big job....can be done by an admin on Blackboard b creating a war file, uploading the mappings from NSSE and creating a custom block  without needing BB professional services or extra $$.

If this cannot be done in Canvas without custom integration services and $$, then Instructure should just say it.

[jenn_stevens]

Hi  @gs899  -

To be fair, my institution does pay good money to have EvaluationKit embed individualized survey links in Canvas, email, and the campus portal, so I was a little taken surprised that NSSE seemed to suggest this was for "campus IT staff" to figure out. I do suspect that for the right person, this job is possible - it's just that I can't spare my right person right now, so I was shamelessly hoping to profit off someone else's good work!

 @kmeeusen  - good suggestion! Last project we asked Professional Services about was cost-prohibitive (and turned out to not be easily outsourceable), so we're planning to do it in-house. Glad to hear it worked well for you, and we'll definitely keep them in mind for the future.

[bgibson]

This PowerShell script will pull user info from a CSV file and create a Canvas Conversation for each, with the unique Survey URL for each.  **I'm not a programmer, and there is no guarantee with this script, but if it helps, please use it.

---

$token = "3474~MA07brX7mM7PzhkgIW0m8sp0H0XjHW5CUFJwoiNrRxnrOkWN0ONXDUEjAucDmYza"
$canvas_domain = "myschool.test.instructure.com" # Your Canvas domain. Use the .test area at first
$headers = @{"Authorization"="Bearer "+$token}

Import-Csv C:\canvas_conversations\source_file.csv | ForEach-Object {
    $user_id = $_.user_id
    $first_name = $_.first_name
    $survey_url = $_."survey_url"

    $uri = "https://"+$canvas_domain+"/api/v1/conversations/?recipients[]=$user_id&subject=NSSE Survey&body=+$first_name, `r`nPlease take the NSSE Survey. `r`nEach survey is especially designed for you. `r`n+$survey_url"

   Write-Host $uri

Invoke-RestMethod -Method POST -uri $uri -Headers $headers

}

---

The source_file.csv would have three columns:  user_id, first_name, survey_url

*I have not seen the actual source_file provided by NSSE, but might have to translate the STUDENTID to the Canvas UserID which is used in the API call.  I generated the "Provisioning Report" from the Canvas Admin Menu to give me the Canvas UserID.  **Also remember that the access token needs to be generated by a user with enough permissions to create the Conversations.  I created a "NSSE" user and assigned them to the Account Admin role.

This is what the Canvas Conversation looks like for one student (with dummy Survey URL):

NOTES:  A further caveat...

What if you want to recall these generated Conversations?  The Conversations API does have a "delete" option, but you have to know the Conversation "ID".  I have not found an easy way to create a list of these Conversation IDs.  I thought pushing display output to a logfile would be nice, but it does not appear to be straightforward for PowerShell.  *So, if someone could find a way to generate a list of Conversation IDs to be used to remove them, if desired, that would be great!

[bgibson]

Just ran my first complete test on our Canvas Test Site. A little over 2700 students in the list. It took almost 14 minutes to complete, and generated a log file of 10.5 MB. I'm not sure how much quicker it would complete if I did not generate a log file, but the file lists the canvas_user_id, and the survey URL, and a bunch of other data for each student that I really don't need, but don't want to take the time to figure out how to get the sparce info I do want in the log file. I randomly selected 4 students, and checked the generated conversations and the survey URL to make sure they matched with the data file, and they did.

[irishb]

Hi Bill,

Thank you so much for providing some guidance around this! : )

Here at Evergreen, we're looking into implementing unique links for students - any updates to the script, please, or new info?

Thanks so much for your time. : )

Bridget Irish (pronouns: she/her) 

Academic Technologies (Computer Center)

The Evergreen State College

Olympia & Tacoma, Washington

[amarchan]

We also have this need. Thank you!  

-Anne

[gs899]

Updates for everyone who is interested in this.

I have been in touch with several schools who have done this successfully in both Canvas and Blackboard. If anyone is interested, you can email me to get the details.

In brief:

-It is much easier to do this in Blackboard than in Canvas.

-The presentation of this in Blackboard is much better than in Canvas when implemented

-In Blackboard an admin with the right instructions can do this fairly easily

-In Canvas unfortunately, this needs more technical expertise as in involves Canvas's Conversation API.

[scottdennis]

Hello  @gs899 ,

Thank you for coming back and posting your findings here.  I apologize for the delay in responding.  We have been aware of your request for a response from Instructure for several days but have been holding off while researching this.  I can confirm that this is unusual in Canvas and that you would likely need a good understanding of the APIs or a professional services engagement to accomplish this.

Thanks,

Scott

[irishb]

Dear Canvas Community,

Any updates/new information, please, regarding the process for implementing unique links to NSSE Survey for students in Canvas?

Thank you for your time.

Bridget Irish

Academic Technologies (Computer Center)

The Evergreen State College

Olympia & Tacoma, Washington

[pstefanuca]

I found this when asked to look into providing the link to students through Canvas. I would need assistance to implement this, and so I would welcome a discussion with others that are/have attempted.

NSSE Technical Advice for Posting Survey Links 

Pam Stefanuca

MICA

pstefanuca@mica.edu