» Online Survey
» Introduction
Most recently, the Rutgers Writing Program has started using an
online survey to assess its web site. This survey is administered
by the Teaching Excellence Center (TEC) at Rutgers and uses an online
form to solicit quantitative and qualitative feedback, asking students
to rate different areas of the website while also asking them for
written feedback on what they found most and least useful. Though
the TEC online survey tool was created in-house (written in Java
Server Pages (JSP) and dumping results into an Extensible Markup
Language (XML) file that can then be opened in Excel XP), many survey
tools are available on the web in scripting languages such as PHP,
often for free.
Such a survey has a number of benefits beyond its combination of
written and statistical assessments. Since we didn't advertise the
survey on the site itself but instead notified students directly
through announcements in class and a student mailing list, we were
able to ask the primary audience for the web site to provide feedback.
Because the final results were sent to use as an Excel file, we
were able to manipulate the numerical data easily. And because we
publicizes the survey through email, students only had to click
a link to complete it, leading to a healthy response and sample
size.
Of course, such a survey has one obvious limitation: survey respondents
are likely to be self-selected. Thus, students who have ready access
to the Web and who spend a lot of time online are most likely to
complete the survey. At the same time, these are the students most
likely to visit our web site in the first place, so this tool remains
valid for assessment.
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