Polls and Surveys

Beginning with the Fall 2024 semester, Brandeis will move from LATTE to Moodle 4. Please visit our Moodle 4 documentation. LATTE courses will be available through Fall 2024.

The Questionnaire activity allows you to survey students. It allows teachers to create a wide range of questions to get student feedback e.g., on a course or activities. With Questionnaire you do not test or assess the student, you gather data.

Similar Activities

The Questionnaire activity is similar to the Feedback activity. Both activities have the same core features and for most situations, you can choose whichever activity has the question types you need or which you just like better. Shared functionality includes:

• Export responses to external file types such as CSV, XLSX, HTML, JSON, ODS, PDF
• Choose from a variety of question types (though the exact choices differ by activity)
  
• Decide whether the students can see the results
• Limit the number of attempts for the survey

However, the Questionnaire activity offers some more robust features than the Feedback activity. If you want any of these features, choose Questionnaire over Feedback:

• Students can save and resume the questionnaire at a later time.
• Teachers can create branching questions i.e., questions that only display based on how students respond to previous questions.

1. In your course with the editing turned on, click Add an activity or resource in the section where you want to add the activity.
2. Select Questionnaire from the activity chooser window.
   
3. Add a name (required) and a description (optional) for the activity. 
4. Scroll down to the Response options section and click to expand it. This section determines the general functionality of the survey.
   • Type: Choose whether students can respond once, daily, weekly, monthly, or many (unlimited) times. 
   • Respondent type: Select whether the survey will be anonymous or will record the students' names with their submissions.
   • Students can view ALL responses: Decide whether students can view other students' responses and, if yes, under what conditions. Students can always see their own submissions to the questionnaire.
   • Send submission notifications: If you would like to receive an email whenever a student submits a Questionnaire, you can receive either the full responses within the email (Full submission) or just a notice that there was a new submission (Notification only)
   • Save/Resume answers: Enabling this allows students to save their draft responses to the questionnaire and submit at a later date. This option is especially helpful for classes where students may have unstable internet and may lose their progress otherwise.
   • Allow branching questions: Branching changes what question or page a student sees next based on how they answer the current question. Most class surveys do not need this option turned on.
   • Auto numbering: Determines whether questions and/or pages will be automatically numbered. We recommend disabling automatic numbering for questionnaires with conditional branching.
   • Show progress bar: Check the box to display a progress bar within the questionnaire. This is most beneficial for surveys that are longer than one page.
   • Submission grade: Gives you the option to assign a grade to the questionnaire. Select a point value from the Submission grade drop-down menu.
     IMPORTANT Unlike with a Quiz activity, with a Questionnaire you cannot grade each question; you can only specify one completion grade for submitting the activity. 
5. The rest of the settings on this page are optional. You can customize your students' experience with the activity by adjusting these.
   • Availability: If you would like to limit when students can respond to the survey, set an activity open date (allow answers from), an activity close date (allow answers to), or both.
6. Click the Save and display button at the bottom of the page when you're finished.

IMPORTANT Each question will ask for a Question Name and a Question Text. The Question Name is only used within LATTE and will NOT be displayed to students. This is an OPTIONAL field. Enter the question/prompt you want students to see within the required Question Text field.

Add Your First Questions

1. From the activity's landing page, click the Add questions button.
   
2. From the dropdown list on the next page, select the question type you want to add then click the Add selected question type button. Brief descriptions of each question type are below, for detailed guidance please see the Editing Questionnaire questions documentation.
   • Question options: 
     • Check boxes: Check boxes allow students to select multiple answers from a list of options.
     • Date: Use this question type if you expect the response to be a correctly formatted date. The date question type will accept dates consisting only of a month plus a year (e.g., 12/2008 for December 2008) or only a year (e.g., 2008). 
     • Dropdown box: A multiple choice question where students select only one answer from a dropdown list.
     • Essay box: This option is for creating a text box (you specify how big it will appear in rows and columns) which people can write a long answer into.
     • Numeric: Use this question type if you expect the response to be a correctly formatted number. You can set the maximum digits allowed in an answer (Max. digits allowed) and adjust the number of decimal places that display in the report (Nb of decimal digits).
     • Radio buttons: A multiple choice question where students select only one answer from a set of radio buttons.
     • Rate (scale 1..5): For this question type you have two display options. The default option displays the Likert scale degrees as numbers (1-5). If you prefer to have named degrees instead of numbers, you'll have to enter those names in the Possible answers list (see Example 3 above). Please read the documentation carefully to ensure your Rate question is formatted properly and contact the Library if you need any assistance.
     • Text box: This option lets you specify a single line answer, with an input box which is a set number of characters long (you choose). You also specify the maximum number of characters you will accept, so that the answer is not too long and/or does not run over the length of the box on screen.
     • Yes/No: A multiple choice question that only accepts answers of Yes or No.
   • Layout/format options
     • Label: Display information or instructions between questions. This is the same functionality as the Label resource within the LATTE course page.
     • Page Break: Divides the questions into multiple pages. This option is not available until you have at least one question.
3. Adjust the order of your questions as needed by clicking and holding the arrows icon and dragging the question to your desired location.
4. Repeat until you have entered each question you want and have finalized the layout.

Editing Existing Questions or Adding Additional Questions

After you've added at least one question to a Questionnaire, the Add Questions button will no longer appear on the activity's landing page. Instead, click on the gear icon in the upper right corner to expand the menu, then click  Questions. From this same menu, you can also Preview your survey to view it from a student's perspective.

1. On your main course page, click on the questionnaire activity to open it.
2. If students have submitted responses, you will see a View All Responses link. Click View All Responses. The View All Responses page will open.
   
3. By default, all responses will display grouped by question, with all the responses submitted for that question. Unless you've enabled anonymous responses, you can also view responses by student. Click the View All Responses tab, then click List of responses. Click on a student's name to view their responses.