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Authoring a survey in WeBWorK?

Authoring a survey in WeBWorK?

by Alasdair McAndrew -
Number of replies: 5
Hello,

Although I've been using WW with my students for many years, I have never authored any problems. But I would like to survey my students, using WW itself. Are there examples of multiple choice, and multiple select, survey questions? Thank you very much,

Alasdair

ww_version: 2.11 | pg_version: 2.11, under Ubuntu Server 14.04.
In reply to Alasdair McAndrew

Re: Authoring a survey in WeBWorK?

by Gavin LaRose -
Hi Alasdair,

Most of these are described in the problem authoring section of the WeBWorK wiki, http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/Authors:
  1. multiple choice problems: http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/MultipleChoiceProblems
  2. multiple select problems: http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/MultipleSelectProblems
  3. essay questions (may be what you need for surveys): http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/EssayAnswer1
Gavin
In reply to Gavin LaRose

Re: Authoring a survey in WeBWorK?

by Alasdair McAndrew -
Thank you very much. The problem with the multiple choice problems is that one answer must be listed as being correct, which in a survey is irrelevant. What I need is some way for students to enter one of possibly five options (assuming a Likert-type scale), but all options are, in a sense, equally "correct".

The multiple select problem allows me to list all options as being correct, but this again is not useful if I want students to pick only one option.

Thank you again,
Alasdair
In reply to Alasdair McAndrew

Re: Authoring a survey in WeBWorK?

by Michael Gage -
And here is an example

These questionnaires were hacked together quickly at the dawn of WeBWorK history. A macro file or a template that makes it easier to construct questionnaires would probably be welcomed by many.


In reply to Michael Gage

Re: Authoring a survey in WeBWorK?

by Raghu Gompa -

I used to use Questionnaires to receive feed back from students.  For example,

Dear student,

I have enjoyed teaching this class and I hope you had as much fun as I did. If you can spare some more time, I would like you to fill this anonymous survey to let me know how you felt about my teaching and give me your final grade of my teaching.

Thank you very much for your time.

Raghu

P.S. You should know that this survey is not completely anonymous (most web browsing is not). With some difficulty, submissions can in principle be traced back to their source. I don't intend to trace the source of any comments, but I thought you should be aware, if you weren't already, that no one is completely anonymous on the web.

Raghu

A. Please select a grade for my teaching of the course.
\{

ANS( anstext('A. Please select a grade for my teaching of the course. 1=A, 2=B, .. ' ) ) ; OL( ans_radio_buttons( 1 => 'A', 2 => 'B', 3 => 'C', 4 => 'D', 5 => 'F', ) );

\}

B. Would you recommend me for another student?
\{

ANS( anstext('B. Would you recommend me for another student? 1=yes, 2=no' ) ) ; OL( ans_radio_buttons( 1 => 'Yes', 2 => 'No', ) );

\}

C. Please tell me about the quality of my classroom presentation.
\{

ANS(anstext('C. Please tell me about the quality of my classroom presentation.')); ans_box( 10,80)

\}

D. Please tell me about my attitude toward the student.
\{

ANS(anstext('D. Please tell me about my attitude toward the student.'));ans_box(10,80 )

\}

E. Please use this space for additional comments regarding my teaching.
\{

ANS(anstext('E. Please use this space for additional comments regarding my teaching.')); ans_box( 10,80)

\}

Thank you very much.


But, now, it does not work with new version of WeBWorK.  Does anyone have any ideas how to do questionnaires in the new system?


In reply to Raghu Gompa

Re: Authoring a survey in WeBWorK?

by Danny Glin -

As the WeBWorK code has been updated and modernized some of the approaches used for these types of questions are no longer practical to maintain.  For one thing, having a WeBWorK problem send emails is no longer sustainable, so it's unlikely that that functionality will come back.

This thread already mentions essay answers as an option for collecting free-entry responses, though these would not be anonymous.

Anonymous surveys were never a core feature of WeBWorK, so it's not something that will likely see any new development in the near future.  I would strongly recommend looking for a tool that is designed for this purpose. If your institution has a learning management system (e.g. Blackboard, Moodle, D2L Brightspace, Canvas), then you can use the survey feature that is built in.  If not, there are commercial tools that offer a certain amount of surveys at no charge (e.g. surveymonkey) which may serve your purpose.  Just be careful about what information you collect if you are using a commercial website, so as not to run afoul of your privacy office.