Category Archives: Instructional Design

Selecting a Web-based Survey Tool

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Have you used an online survey system? They often provide quick and easy solutions for gathering data and can be helpful as part of the design and development process to get feedback from testers, students, and instructors. Most of these products offer an intuitive dashboard for creating survey questions with templates and generate a URL that you can send in an email or post on a website to provide direct access to the instrument.

If you are interested in using a web-based survey system there are a few questions to answer first:

  1. What is your budget? Most of the vendors offer free and paid versions. The free versions, as you might expect, are more limited. 
  2. What types of questions do you need to ask? Multiple choice, open-ended, select all, rank order… take a close look at your instrument see if there are special considerations related to item type.
  3. How many (items and participants) do you anticipate? Free versions often have a maximum number of items per survey and/or a maximum number of responses.
  4. Do you have any special requirements? If you need to add branching logic, for example, or randomly present your survey questions, these capabilities and many others are possible with online surveys.
  5. What are you going to do with the data you collect? These systems allow you to export participant responses in multiple formats – do you need something specific for reporting or analysis purposes?
  6. Do you need to customize? Different systems offer different options for creating custom URLs, adding images (e.g. logos), and creating color schemes. These may be more important if you are creating an instrument for distribution outside of your organization that would benefit from branding.

Recently I had the opportunity to review and select a survey tool for a project associated with Inside Online Learning. I had previous experience with SurveyMonkey and QuestionPro, so started with these first. It didn’t take long to see that are a lot more tools to choose from so I asked my Twitter network for suggestions. That request resulted in a nice list of tools to try – some with personal testimonials, others from the survey companies themselves.

My preference with this project was to go with a free version if at all possible – a brief survey with limited release as a pilot. I reviewed the websites of the 7 survey systems that were recommended and created these comparison charts (below) along the way.  These charts include the features I was looking for, but there are many, many more available including social media integration, secure SSL connections, multiple languages, analytics, etc.

FREE* SurveyMonkey SurveyShare SurveyGizmo

Zoomerang

Rational Survey
# of responses 100 per survey 50 per survey 250 per month 100 per survey 1000 total
# of questions 10 per survey 12 per survey Unlimited 12 questions 100 total / 10 surveys
Logic branching no yes limited no no
Random questions no ? yes no ?
Export responses no no CSV no no
PAID* SurveyMonkey SurveyShare SurveyGizmo

Zoomerang

Rational Survey

mid-range option** $299/yr (Gold Plan) $200/yr (Pro Plan) $588/yr (Pro Plan) $199/yr (Pro Plan) $240/yr (Basic Plan)
# of responses Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited 500 total
# of questions Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited 5000 total / 50 surveys
Logic branching Yes Yes Yes yes yes
Random questions Yes ? yes yes ?
Export responses Excel, CSV, PDF, SPSS, HTML, XML Excel, CSV, SPSS CSV, PDF Excel, CSV, PDF Excel, CSV, PDF

* These charts are based on my interpretation of the information posted on the websites.

** In most cases there are multiple plans to choose from, offering a range of service packages and price points. This chart lists just one of the price categories. There are more and less expensive options for each system.

Also reviewed:

  • Qualtrics: This is an enterprise level system, which was overkill for my current needs with one small survey.
  • JotForm: Interesting! For me, not quite as intuitive as the others, but a customizable interface with emailed responses.

The comparison charts helped me narrow my list down to two: Zoomerang and SurveyGizmo. I then created my survey in those systems.  My final selection was SurveyGizmo –  It gave me the most room to work with in terms of number of questions and responses allowed, and had a (slightly) more intuitive interface for creating and managing my survey. I deployed it with little difficulty and have been pleased with the results. I was able to create a professional looking survey, insert a logo, and set up matrix-type questions. Should I need to upgrade to a paid version in the future, I will complete another comparison. While SurveyGizmo offers a lot of room in the free version, the paid options seem more costly than the other systems.

What additional features and functions should we consider? If you have deployed an online survey and have tips for selection and/or lessons learned, please consider sharing your recommendations here.

Image credit: stock.xchng

Writing Learning Objectives

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Last week a colleague asked me if could recommend any resources to help out with writing objective statements. I had to admit right from the start that I, too, could use a refresher.

The Basics

It may not be the most glamorous part of the design process, but it is oh so important to nail down before moving on. The learning objectives serve to clarify the purpose of the experience you are about to create. Key questions to consider as you get started:

  1. How should the learner be changed after completing the lesson?  Will they know something they didn’t know before, be able to do something they weren’t able to do before?
  2. How will you know the change has taken place? This leads to how learning can and will be assessed. (Good to start thinking about this now.)
  3. At what level are you writing these objectives? Objectives can be written on multiple levels – program, course, module, lesson – and should be connected. Have higher-level objectives already been written?
  4. Do performance standards already exist that might guide your work? Depending on the context of the learning experience you are creating, and the content topic (think medical training, teacher education, etc.) there may be professional organizations or regulating agencies that provide standards that need to be met.

All too often the writing of learning objectives is rushed or left out completely resulting in a product that is not effective as intended – failing to provide the learners with what they need to achieve that ‘change’ that was required and expected.

Who writes, reviews, and approves learning objectives? A Subject Matter Expert may provide the learning objectives or the Instructional Designer may draft for review. Ideally, this is a collaborative process – there is a lot to consider in terms of expected outcomes, content, delivery, and assessment.

A Few Resources

  • A Quick Guide to Writing Learning Objectives – Big Dog Little Dog – There are a lot of nice posts on this site. This one provides templates and examples.
  • Writing Learning Objectives – The eLearning Coach – Another favorite blog. This post is Part 1 of 3 in a series.
  • Guide to Writing Learning Objectives – NERC – A comprehensive document with writing prompts, and lots of good and bad examples from a professional organization/industry perspective.
  • Action Words – There are a lot of these lists available online. This one seems to be one of the more comprehensive versions out there and is organized according to Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Share your experiences!

What’s the most difficult part of writing learning objectives? Who on your team writes, reviews, and approves the learning objectives? What tips would you offer others asking for help?

Image credit: Mark Brannan, Flickr

Create and Share Your Own Images

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One of the many tasks involved in preparing content for delivery is locating and selecting appropriate images. Whether you are writing a blog post or developing a full academic course, images (drawings, photographs, charts, etc.) help tell a story, help to get the message across.

Where do you find images?

You may be lucky enough to have a graphic artist in-house or maybe a subscription to a stock images resource. But if you’re on a budget, you may be looking for other options – images that are available online with no fee for use. Creative Commons (CC) licenses are a popular way for photographers to make their work available for you to use. Here are a couple of ways to search for CC licensed images: Flickr and the Creative Commons search page.

Do you have images to share?

If you are interested in contributing, you can do so by creating your own online account and making your photos available – searchable and clearly labeled with your intent for their use. One option is @DailyShoot:

The Daily Shoot is a simple daily routine to motivate and inspire you to practice your photography, and share your results! It’s not a contest and there are no prizes. It’s simply about encouraging you to pick up your camera and make photographs.

Everyday @Dailyshoot tweets an assignment – an idea, a topic, to focus your efforts. You tweet a link to your photo for that assignment that includes the day’s hashtag, and it is linked to the site. For more about how it works, check out The Daily Shoot. If you post one photo per day you would end up with 365 contributions by the end of the year (next year, that is)! Even one per week would result in a gallery of 52. As a consumer of CC licensed images, now I can contribute to the pool.

Most of The Daily Shoot participants don’t post every day, but a couple do. You can browse their past photos on the site. It’s also interesting to see the differences and similarities in approach to each day’s assignment. As an example, take a look at 12/26/10 – “What fuels your creative process?”

I heard about this project at a conference in September and have wanted to give it a try ever since. Armed with a brand new camera (thanks, Adam!) I just started yesterday. I’ll be contributing via my Flickr stream.

Are you already sharing your images? If so, please let us know where! If not, consider joining in.

Image credit: gywst

Update! (12/3/11) The Daily Shoot decided to cease operations several months ago, but fortunately the organizers made their list of of prompts available via Google Docs: Daily Shoot Assignments. I managed to complete 150 assignments in the past year and have now maxed out my free Flickr account. While I consider upgrading to “Pro” I’m looking for a new source of prompts….any ideas? Please share them here!