Survey Tools

Spurred by this week’s assignment, I threw myself again into learning a new piece of technology – Qualtrics survey tool.

In anticipation of taking this course, I used PollEverywhere in a conference presentation. The stakes were very high as failure would have been professionally embarrassing for me. However, it turned out fairly simple. I took a few hours to learn how to do it, develop my questions, tinker with the look and feel, and then test. I tested over and over and made sure I had worked out all the wrinkles before my presentation.

One wrinkle I did not anticipate – my audience. Financial advisors are often said to be 59 year old men, on average. It turns out some of them have never sent a text, don’t know how to do it, and it required about 5 minutes of ordering younger participants around the room to get people set up on their phones to send and receive texts! The result, however, was powerful for me – clear feedback from the audience on their experience in the areas I was discussing in my talk.

New learning is always invigorating, and there's an additional surge of energy when you venture into an area with apprehension and experience some success. I was surprised at the number of friends and family – similar demographic as above – who expressed openly hostile and negative attitudes about these technology tools. In reference to social media, one person said she was “beyond it”. In my new enthusiasm, I would express it a different way.

I have found that there is some transferable knowledge from one tool to the next. It’s not a completely new navigation. Gradually I feel I’ve been in this neighbourhood before, or a similar neighbourhood.

Qualtrics was no exception. What a beautifully professional product emerges from my basic inputs. As I type in questions, I realize just how many things I want to know about my audience, and it is exciting to think that I can ask for this feedback in such a simple way. I also think it's powerful for students to feel their feedback is heard and wanted.

Qualtrics was nearly immediate in terms of being able to set up a survey and run it right away. Two tiny, simple, intuitive tweaks made it more attractive visually.

There are many more options to manage the survey, but what I am enjoying with many of these technologies is that they seem to be so simple to start and run with. You can improve and redesign at your leisure, but meanwhile you are up and running! In the past, it seemed very much the opposite. The startup instructions were so dense and detailed it discouraged the first attempt.

Thank you to all the designers of these wonderful technologies!

Lynn