Creating Surveys

Whether you are creating a survey for general-purpose information gathering from your students, or to supplement the SIRS with your own questions, you’ll find that there are several survey tools to choose from. Below are a few that we have found to be particularly useful for surveying students in a course, with instructions on how to use them.

Please keep in mind that surveys for research or publication must meet legal requirements, possibly including Human Subjects Certification. Please contact the Office of Research Regulatory Affairs for guidance.

Additional information about using midcourse surveys is available in our recorded midcourse workshop (login to Canvas required).

Rutgers-supported options

Microsoft Forms (Rutgers Connect) Recommended Easy to use, quick to set up, and handles many question types (scales, comments, multiple choice, etc.). Start by duplicating the OTEAR Midcourse Template in Rutgers Connect, then edit and distribute to your students.

Google Documents “Forms”: Recommended. Easy to use, quick to set up, and handles many question types (scales, comments, multiple choice, etc.). You can use a Rutgers ScarletMail account, or a standard Google account will also work. Read how to create a survey in Google Documents, or sign in with your ScarletMail address and use the “template gallery” (upper-right corner) to see the ready-made “OTEAR Midcourse Template”.

Canvas Quizzes: For instructors already using Canvas, you can add a semi-anonymous, ungraded quiz to collect survey responses from students in your class. Read how to create a survey in the Canvas quiz tool, or use the “Commons” tool to search for “Midcourse Survey Template”

Blue: Blue is the system used for the end-of-semester Student Instructional Rating Survey. We have created a process to support midcourse surveys using the same framework. The midcourse surveys can be turned on for any course by the administrators in each academic unit, with options to send the survey results to the instructor alone, or to both the instructor and the department administration. See our page about midcourse surveys in Blue for more information.

Qualtrics: Qualtrics is a robust and complicated survey platform, and is better suited for research and general-purpose surveys. If you are already familiar with Qualtrics, you can use it for a simple midcourse survey. https://rutgers.qualtrics.com/

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Other options

TooFAST: Specifically designed for instructional rating surveys. Instructors can use their free service, or if you have your own web server and the technical skills, you can install the software on your own system. TooFAST.ca