[Courses] True surveys

Status: Open Submitted by on ‎12-16-2019 12:41 AM

Challenge: Surveys still look like quizzes

In the current version of Canvas (December 2019), students have to click a button that says 'Submit Quiz' to submit a survey. Surveys also turn up in the Quiz area. It's possible to add a text instruction reassuring students that a survey is a survey, not a quiz, but because surveys are built on the Quizzes feature, the UI might cause confusion.

 

It also seems that the survey feature will not be included in New Quizzes, and may go away entirely in 2020 as a result. This timing might give Instructure an opportunity to redesign the survey function.

 

Idea: True surveys

Create a true survey function in Canvas, one which is distinctly a survey rather than a quiz, at least from the student's perspective. (For example, students would click 'Submit Survey' rather than 'Submit Quiz', and ideally not find the survey in the Quizzes area.)

 

Keep the survey function available after the switch from "Quizzes" to "New Quizzes".

 

Links

I have noticed these two related bits of information on the Canvas Community:

They seem to imply that the existing survey functionality will go away.

 

Community members might also be interested in the following pages, which show how the survey is experienced like a quiz:

 

Related ideas

This idea requests a survey function that will remain open as of 2020 and into the future, and which does not look like a Quiz to a student. Community members may also like to look at related ideas like:

22 Comments
nsweeten
Community Contributor
‎01-02-2020 01:41 PM

Spreadsheet Requested!

Please adjust Survey replies to feed into a spreadsheet, including free-form essay answers/qualitative answers. How do I view survey results in a course? 

(The Gradebook can be exported into a spreadsheet. Please make surveys do the same.) I know you'll like it too, right,  @afleming1 ‌ ?

 

What is the point of a Survey without the results compiled?  That is data the hard way.  

 

Fixing this survey feature to be more functional will prevent the need for outside tools. 

afleming1
Community Member
‎01-02-2020 01:49 PM

Now that sounds like a good idea, right now we use Survey Monkey, if we could do a Canvas Survey Monkey, compile the data it would be amazing and keep it anonymous.

Mrs. Angela Fleming, MA, RMA, CCA, CBCS

Manager of Online Learning & Online Support

11883 High Tech Ave.

Orlando, FL 32817

407-571-1117-Office

afleming@southerntech.edu<mailto:afleming@southerntech.edu>

ashleya2
Community Participant
Author
‎01-02-2020 03:45 PM

Excellent point  @sweetera ‌ - data collection is great, but rather less than useful unless you can pull it out and analyse it easily!

ashleya2
Community Participant
Author
‎01-02-2020 03:48 PM

Agreed,  @angelafleming ‌. Third-party survey tools can be great, but both the student and the instructor have to leave the LMS to use them. We keep our current surveys in Commons, which I love - it's so easy to design the questions once and put them in multiple courses. I just wish it didn't say "submit quiz" when the student goes to submit it; that gives the feeling that there are right and wrong answers, or that they might be back in the panopticon, with us watching their replies.

Kelvin_Dean
Community Contributor
‎07-29-2020 07:41 PM

In order to accomplish this, the Restrict Student Result View needs to be changed to Restrict Result View, so that the result view will be (hopefully) the same for both students and teachers.

Release results

Points

This affects viewing the number of points for each question and the number of points overall. You can choose whether you want the number of points to be displayed to both teachers and students, teachers only, or hidden from view.

Items, Questions & Student Responses

These items are always shown to teachers, regardless of whether or not you show the results to students.

STUDENTS CAN SEE

  • Items, questions, and responses: Students can see the items, questions, and what their responses were.
  • Items and questions only: Students can see the items and questions but not their responses.
  • Nothing: Students will only see a submission confirmation.

RESULT AVAILABILITY

  • Always: Show the results immediately.
  • After last attempt: Students can only see their correct responses after their final quiz attempt.
  • Only once after each attempt: Students will only be able to view the results immediately after they have completed the quiz—results include both their responses and the correct answers (if enabled). This will override any show or hide dates or times (see the Release Results section). If you want to show or hide correct answers on any specific date or time, the Only Once option should not be selected. To give extra result views, use the Moderate tab.
  • Only once after last attempt: Students will only be able to view the results immediately after they have completed their final attempt on a quiz.

ITEM FEEDBACK
You can choose whether you want students to view feedback and/or explanations for each question.

Markings

Can students tell if they got the question right or not?

CORRECT/INCORRECT INDICATORS AND CORRECT RESPONSES
You can choose whether you want the correct/incorrect indicators and/or correct responses to be displayed to both teachers and students, teachers only, or hidden from view.

STUDENT VIEW OPTIONS

  • Show correct responses only after their last attempt: Correct answers will be shown only after all attempts have been used. This is useful to prevent cheating; incorrect questions just tell the student to try again when a student still has attempts remaining.

Release Results

When do you want to release the results? It's up to you to decide.

(This cannot be used if Only once after each attempt is selected for the Result Availability.)

SHOW/HIDE
Set when you would like to show and/or hide the responses from students. Leave blank if you want to release the results immediately.

APPLIES TO

  • Correct responses only: Students can still see their responses, but not the correct ones until the release period begins.
  • All items: Students cannot see the correct answers nor what their answers were outside of the release period.

So what settings make a true survey?

As far as I know, when creating any type of survey in New Quizzes, it's better to hide the correct/incorrect indicators completely from view for teachers and students. However, this poses a huge issue when it comes to the grades and points, and it is called regrading questions.

Regrading

In New Quizzes, there are different options for regrading items, but which one is the most feasible? Let's go over each one.
(Assuming that all students have taken a graded survey, it's better to wait until all students have submitted.)

AWARD POINTS FOR CORRECT ANSWER ONLY
Some scores may be reduced; others raised. That's not it. Next item!

AWARD POINTS FOR BOTH CURRENT AND PREVIOUS ANSWERS
No scores will be affected. Still, that's not the one we're looking for.

AWARD POINTS FOR ANY SUBMITTED ANSWER
Only answered questions get full credit. This can work, but not for unanswered questions.

GIVE EVERYONE FULL CREDIT
The question is thrown out, and all students will receive full credit, even for unanswered questions.

So, giving everyone full credit is the most viable option for graded surveys, but that can be a hassle, depending on the number of questions in a survey and the number of students in the class. To fix this problem, there should be an option in the Correct/Incorrect Indicators setting to hide from both teachers and students AND give full credit for all questions. This can work for all question types, especially those that do not have a Vary Points By Answer setting. Doing so will disable the ability for regrading.
(Ungraded surveys use the same procedure above, except you don't have to deal with points anymore.)

nsweeten
Community Contributor
‎07-30-2020 01:42 PM

 @afleming1 ‌. You can embed Survey Money to be visible in Canvas, using the embed code and the HTML window that shows up in edit mode of RCE (rich content editor--the "box" that is everywhere in Canvas). 

*I'm hoping Canvas will just fix their survey tool, but yes, students can take an embedded survey monkey right in Canvas.  The instructor goes outside to see the results, but (in the past) I have been able to embed that compilation results sheet too in an unpublished "Instructor only" module. 

Message me if you want any help with that. Smiley Happy

danaleeling
Community Participant
‎02-12-2021 11:52 PM

Anonymous polling and surveying capabilities are the life blood of affective domain assessment. In an LMS I used previously polls were a function that could be set up from an announcement, data was tabulated anonymously. This allowed me to poll my students on affective domain questions such as "I prefer learning via..." a. Reading a textbook b. Viewing a presentation c. Watching a video explanation d. Listening to a lecture delivered over teleconferencing media such as Zoom. This quick "pulse take" polls help provide rapid feedback and guidance. I have not explored Classic quizzes and their survey capacity as that tool is deprecated and as new Canvas user I cannot see spending time learning to use a tool that will disappear soon. New quizzes has no such polling capabilities nor should it. As this post title says, there is a need for true survey and polling capabilities with data export capacities.

wweems
Community Member
‎02-18-2021 05:33 PM

It would be awesome to have survey questions in new quizzes. Would help on questions that don’t necessarily have a right answer but you want to give an credit for attempting the question.

amaz81
Community Member
‎03-06-2021 10:20 AM

Currently, new quizzes does NOT have a graded survey option. This is a very helpful tool for extra credit that I use every semester. (I teach at a university.) I use it to get feedback onto course and make improvements. The university keeps increasing my student numbers in the course, which I can't control. The auto grading feature is really helpful for graded surveys for essay questions. I like how you can adjust points manually and make comments per question. (Although, there's currently an engineering glitch with this and manually adjusting points on questions in graded surveys isn't reflecting in the final grade. I've submitted a request to engineering but it hasn't been fixed. If you also have this issue please refer to Tracker QO-161 when you contact support.) 

Graded surveys also need to have a minimum answer option like new quizzes has. There also need to be a feature in both graded surveys and new quizzes so that a student MUST respond to all questions before submitting the response. As of now, if they start an essay question quiz and dont write anything and a default grade is used, then it gives them full points when they have not responded. That would be easy to fix if engineering fixed the issue above where you could adjust points per question for the ones they missed. 

I hate submitting these requests because I feel you no one read them or responds. This is one of the most helpful tools for my course and I know others as well so it would be helpful to get a response or update my tracker QO-161. Thank you. 

spastor22
Community Explorer
‎04-13-2021 02:33 PM

I understand that Surveys will be going away as the "New Quizzes" iteration of Canvas quizzes takes over. The thought of surveys going away stinks as this is a great way to get ideas from students and create community.  However, it would be great to have a stand alone tool for surveys that would be independent of quizzes all together, since in its current form in Classic Quizzes, students still have to click "Submit Quiz" instead of "Submit Survey," which is a point of confusion. Please create a survey tool in Canvas.