Surveys

= [|Nine Survey Tools for Teachers and Students] = On many occasions in the past I've written [|here] and shared on other forums that I think placing a survey or poll on your classroom blog or website is a great way to get informal feedback from your students. I usually put a survey on my class blog a week or so before any formal assessment that my students are going to take. That feedback helps me identify the areas that my students need more help and or clarification on.

Here are nine tools that you can use to put a survey or poll on your class blog.

Using [|Yarp] you can create a simple one question survey or one line event invitation. To create a [|Yarp]survey select "survey" on the homepage, type a question, then select your answer format. All answer formats present only two options along the lines of "true or false" or "yes or no." [|Yarp] invitations use the same format styles as [|Yarp] surveys.

[|Vorbeo] is a free service for creating polls for your blog or website. To use [|Vorbeo] just type your question, enter your answer choices, select a background color, and specify the width of your polling widget. Then copy the embed code provided by [|Vorbeo] and paste it into the html editor of your blog or website.

[|Urtak] is a free and simple polling service that can be used on any blog or website. The polls you create can have multiple questions, but they must be "yes or no" questions. But [|Urtak] isn't that limited because visitors to your poll also have the option of writing in their own questions. You can get started using [|Urtak] in seconds by registering with your Twitter or Facebook account. You can also use your email address to create an account with [|Urtak]. [|Urtak] polls can be embedded into your blog or you can direct people to your poll by sharing the unique url Urtak assigns to your poll.

[|Buzz Dash] is a free polling service that allows anyone to create a poll to use on any blog or website. There are a lot of survey and polling widgets that you can use on your blog (in fact, Blogger has one built-in), but what I like about [|Buzz Dash] is that your poll results instantly update whenever someone votes. The update happens without the need to refresh your page in order to see the new poll results.

[|Obsurvey] gives you the flexibility to create multiple choice surveys or open-ended surveys. Setting up a survey with [|Obsurvey] is an easy process. To set up a survey simply select your question format and then edit the questions and answer choices using the text editor. The [|video here] shows you how to set-up Obsurvey.

[|Fluid Surveys] is a good tool for quickly creating surveys that offer multiple response formats. Many free survey programs only allow one type of response format, multiple choice or text. [|Fluid Surveys] allows you to combine both formats in one survey. The drag and drop interface is so easy to use that you can build a survey in less than a minute. Watch the [|video here] to see how easy it is to use Fluid Surveys.

[|Stellar Survey]offers free surveys that teachers and school administrators can use to get feedback about courses and instructors. Users can select from a predefined template and questions or create a survey from scratch. The free, basic account only allows 50 responses per survey so it is not ideal for large classes, but for most teachers 50 responses will adequate. //No list of survey tools would be complete without mentioning the following two very popular services.// [|Polldaddy] is one of the most recognized platforms for online polling. The free [|Polldaddy] plan allows you to create polls or surveys containing up to ten questions. Poll/ survey results are displayed in real-time. [|Poll Everywhere] is a poll/ survey service that allows you to collect responses via text messaging. Post your question(s) on your unique Poll Everywhere survey and the audience can voice their opinion(s) using their cell phones. Survey results are available instantly. The free plan allows you to collect responses from up to thirty respondents.