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How do I use Surveys? Activities | Surveys

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Using surveys

Surveys can be used to gain insight into how students rate your course. Possible topics for the survey can be feedback on the workload, literature, and/or the examination/assessment. You can opt for anonymous surveys, but you can also link the responses to the names of your students.

You need to enable the Survey functionality in your Brightspace course before you can start creating a survey.

  • Go to Administration in the navbar of your course.
  • Click Course Admin.
  • Select Tools below the heading Administration.
  • Notice the cross behind the Survey option in the list. Click on the cross to turn it into a check mark to enable the functionality.
  • Refresh the page. When you click  Activities in the navbar of your course, you will now see that Surveys has been added to the menu.

We advise you to create all your questions in the Question Library before you create your actual survey. This will significantly speed up the process of adding and reusing new questions to both Quizzes and Surveys. The process of creating new questions in the Question Library is explained in the article How do I use the Question Library?

Survey homepage

  • Go to Activities in the navbar of your course.
  • Click Surveys. You will now see the Survey homepage (Manage Surveys). This page will show you an overview of all the surveys that have been created for this course.
  1. The buttons at the top allow you to:
    • create a new survey. Click New Survey;
    • edit the categories for the surveys. Click Edit Categories. You are now able to reorder the categories (Sort Order), remove a category (bin symbol), or add a new category (Add category);
    • click More Actions to Copy, Reorder, Make Visible for Users, Hide from Users or Delete surveys.
  2. Sort the surveys in the overview behind Preview by Availability or Category. You can do this by selecting one of those options in the drop-down menu and clicking Apply.
  3. Click the fold-out arrow next to the survey's name to open the survey quickmenu.
  4. Edit multiple surveys at once with the Bulk Edit option. Check the boxes for multiple surveys and click on Bulk Edit to do so.

With Bulk Edit you can:

  1. Change the name of a survey;
  2. Allocate the survey to a different category (or add a new category);
  3. Change the visibility of a survey by ticking the checkbox under Hide from Users. A survey will automatically be visible to students, unless you tick the checkbox.
  4. Click on Save to save your changes.

Provide students with easy access to the survey by adding it to the course content.

Survey quickmenu

The Survey homepage allows you to easily take different actions concerning one of your surveys by accessing to survey’s quickmenu.

  • Click the fold-out arrow next to the name of the survey and choose:
    • Edit to edit the survey;
    • Hide from Users to make the survey invisible to students;
    • Preview to view a preview of your survey and to test the survey as if you were a student.
      • Click Submit Quiz or Exit Preview when you are done;
    • Reports to view the Survey's Reports. These will only be available when you have completed the Reports Setup of this particular survey.
    • Statistics to view the survey's statistics.  

Creating a survey

  • Go to Activities in the navbar of your course.
  • Click Surveys. You will land on the Survey homepage.
  • Click New Survey.
  1. Name the survey.
  2. Select, if needed, a category to which the survey belongs from the drop-down menu or click add category to create a new category (for example: Surveys Semester 1). Add a name and click Save.
  3. Check the give instant feedback box to provide a student with instant feedback (that has been previously written) the moment they have filled in a question.
  4. Check the make results anonymous box when students should fill in the survey anonymously. This option cannot be changed after the creation of the survey. Checking this box will also disable the ability to add release conditions to the survey.
  5. Click Add/Edit Questions to add questions.
  6. Add a description, if needed, that students will see before they fill in the survey or a submission message that students will see when they completed the survey. Click Expand description/submission Message and use the HTML editor to add the messages.
  7. Add a footer if needed. This footer will be visible at the bottom of every page of the survey. Click Expand page footer and use the HTML editor to add the message.
  8. Click Save and Close to return to the Survey homepage.
  • Click Restrictions to set dates, deadline and time limit for the survey. 
  • Generating a survey report can be done by following the steps of the Reports Setup. This report can be used to easily share data from a survey with others that usually do not have access to the survey’s statistics.

Adding questions

There are three ways to add questions to a survey:

  1. Creating new questions.
  2. Upload existing questions.
  3. Import existing questions from your Question Library.
  • Go to Activities in the navbar of your course.
  • Click Surveys.
  • Click New Survey or Edit for an existing survey.
  • Click Add/Edit Questions.
  • Click Import to import existing questions:
    • Click Upload a file to import files from your computer. You can click Browse Files or use drag-and-drop. Note: you can only import .csv or .zip files!
    • Click Browse Existing Questions to import previously created or imported questions.

We recommend adding questions that you have previously created in the question library (via Browse Existing Questions). This gives you a clear overview of all the questions neatly arranged and allows you to use them in multiple surveys and/or quizzes.

You can now use the Question Library to select and add questions. Use the search and filter options to find the questions you want.

  1. Use the search bar to find a question by filling in a (part) of the title.
  2. Use the drop-down menu next to Source to select from which source you want to add a question. You can search in the whole library but also in specific surveys or quizzes.
  3. Filter questions by type (e.g. multiple-choice, true/false or multi-select).
  4. Choose how you want to sort (by type, by title/text or by the total amount of achievable points).
  5. Select the questions you want to add.
  6. Click Add.

You cannot add questions that are already being used in other surveys.

Editing questions

Questions that have been added from the question library can now be edited.

  • Add the preferred question.
  • Click Move to move questions in the question library from one section to the other.
  • Click Delete to remove questions from the survey (you will not remove them from the question library).
  • Click Order to change the order of the questions.
  • Click Edit Values to indicate whether a question is Mandatory or not.
    • Click Save to save your changes and return to the previous page.
  • Click on the fold-out arrow next to a question and click Edit to edit the question.
  • Click Done Editing Questions to return to the Edit Survey page.

You will receive a warning when you Edit the content of a question that is already used in another quiz or survey.

  • Previously created information items (Text/Image Information (TXT)/(IMG)) in the question library (for example a text about a case study that you want to use for multiple questions) can be added to a quiz and/or survey just like regular questions (via Add/Edit Questions). The Order option can be used to place certain questions below the information item. This way, when students are filling in the survey, they will see the information item (case study explanation) before they answer the related questions (this can be checked by using Preview).    
  • The Edit Values option can also be found on the Edit Survey page. Click the fold-out arrow next to the survey and select Edit.

On the Edit Survey page below Survey Questions you can:

  1. indicate next to Questions per Page how many questions are displayed per page. If you do not fill in a specific number (and confirm this by clicking Apply) the survey will be displayed on one page;
  2. check the Paging box if you want to allow students to view previous pages;
  3. use Shuffle questions at the quiz level to prevent all students from seeing all the questions in the same order (sections will be shuffled, not sub questions);
  4. create a path within your survey using Branching Wizard. Students will then answer questions in a set order and will only see one question per page. You will not be able to shuffle questions when you have selected this option (and will receive a notification if you have previously selected this option). Fill in the order of the questions by indicating which questions leads to what question after a certain answer or that the survey will end after a certain answer. Click Save to return to the Edit Survey page. Note: Branching only works with multiple choice and true/false questions.
  5. give students access to the survey with Invite Participants. Brightspace will send an email with a link to the survey to the participants. You will need to fill in a subject, a message and one or more email addresses when you click Invite Participants.

If you use branching you will not be able to add or edit questions or change the order of the questions. Even if you make a copy of the survey. Switch the branching option only on when you're done editing all the questions and have set the correct order, otherwise you have to start over with a new survey.

  1. Add a title to the message. You can use replace strings to personalize your message.
  2. Search for the student you want to invite by his/her name in the search bar.
  3. Or select the students you want to invite to this survey by ticking the checkbox in front of their names.
  4. Click Submit to send the message.
  • A survey is only accessible to students when it is switched to Active­.
  • Students can only fill in a survey when they are logged into Brightspace. When a student clicks on the link in the mail they will get an error message when they are not logged in.
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