Organizing & formatting Blackboard surveys
When you begin creating your survey, Blackboard will prompt you to provide a name, description, and instructions for your assessment.
Begin with an introduction explaining the survey's purpose, how results will be used, how to complete the survey, and the terms of confidentiality or anonymity. Providing these terms promotes honest responding.
Use clear, basic instructions for completing the survey. For short answer or essay questions explain the desired length and detail of responses. Blackboard allows you to edit your introduction at any time if you need to.
This survey is designed to assess the impact of the Classroom Performance System (CPS) on learning and course satisfaction. Your responses will be used to improve and guide the future use of the CPS. Responses will be kept anonymous and will not affect your grade in the course. Please indicate how much you agree with the following statement…
Multiple section instructions
For surveys with multiple sections, it is best to introduce each section with a short statement about its content and purpose to help orient the respondent and organize the survey. Unfortunately, Blackboard only allows you to provide instructions at the beginning of the survey. If necessary, you can provide section instructions at the beginning of the text for a question and then skip a line to write the actual question.
Question #3 In this section we would like your opinion about the uses of Blackboard in this course.
“Did the instructor communicate information effectively?”
Instruct respondents how to submit an electronic survey. Tell respondents whom to contact if they want further information. Include a message letting respondents know their electronic submission was successful if applicable. Blackboard does not allow you to thank participants at the end of a survey, so you will need to thank them in the initial instructions.
Format survey questions
Use the following conventions to format your survey:
- Make the survey visually inviting and easy to follow.
- Avoid tiny fonts or fonts that are distracting or difficult to read.
- Order questions carefully to improve the flow and coherence of your survey. The question order can be edited at any time with Blackboard.
- Avoid using the randomize questions option under modify survey options. Instead, group similar questions together so the survey is easy to follow
- Blackboard allows you to choose between displaying questions
together on one screen or one at a time.
- Displaying questions one at a time works best when your survey is relatively short.
- Group similar questions together so the survey is easy to follow.
- Ask interesting questions first in order to engage respondents.
- Position sensitive questions in the middle.
- Once respondents have begun completing your survey, they may be more likely to answer sensitive questions.
- Placing them at the very beginning may result in potential respondents refusing to participate.
- Place demographic questions (major, year, age, etc.) at the