Survey | E-verything!

Introduction

In this recorded session we took a look at if, and how, we use/have used e-polling or surveys. The idea for this session was triggered when I used a poll in the overview for last week’s Serendipity and wondered about the different polling and survey tools that people use.

The Session

We started with a look at whether we had used polling/surveys either as a respondent or as an information gatherer. Then moved on to the platforms on which we have used them, finding that most of us had used polling/surveys on one or more of: Twitter, Facebook, blogs, mobile devices and of course “Other” including Learning Management Systems, Elluminate/BlackboardCollaborate and email!

Then came the most interesting part of the session where we started to look at tools we have used and/or that we know about. We began this by using a whiteboard to name those tools we have used as information gatherer, and as respondent and also those we have heard about.

Next came the best bit where members of the group shared an experience of using a poll/survey tool, We had brief looks at GoogleForms (including a quick play), Facebook, Flubaroo and PollDaddy before running out of time and moving on to our best takeaways from the session. This session flew by and we reached the end far too soon!

Conclusion

This was so interesting – I love to know what tools others are using and to hear about the contexts and purposes. I had a major takeaway in that although I was aware of GoogleForms in a vague way and had responded to polls via that tool I didn’t realise how many different question types there were. Neither had I really taken in the fact that a spreadsheet is automatically created for the answers thus making subsequent data analysis very easy.

Next Webinar

Our next session will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday January 19^that 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday January 20^th at 7am West Aus, mid morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual BlackboardCollaborate room. This is one of our fortnightly unconference sessions where we invite you to bring along your “hot topics” and “burning issues” for our poll on the topic.

Introduction

Our first Serendipity session of the year was a great session! As always the session was recorded and is well worth a watch/listen for the huge amount of sharing of ideas and links. I’m sorry for the delay in posting – a combination of migraines, a visitor staying and too many things still to do before I go back to work has left me without enough time!

The Session

We started as usual by putting our topic ideas on the whiteboard and then polling to choose the topic for consideration. The winner was a double topic “IEP for gifted students” and “Behaviour strategies for gifted”.

Once the topic was chosen we started with a whiteboard for the headings and to collect some of our ideas and thoughts on this including some links. As usual ideas were also shared via text chat and audio. This was a lively session with much of the sharing via audio leaving me with a dilemma about an image/interactive for this week’s post. The whiteboard has only a very small part of those things that were shared as does text chat. So what I have finally done is to experiment with a survey!

While the survey doesn’t give us an image in the post it does give us something different to do and so meets my personal criteria for something other than just plain text in every post 🙂

Conclusion

I enjoyed this session – this is one of the topics that we have visited before from different angles and I am always fascinated by the different directions taken when topics are re-visited. Because we never have exactly the same group of people each week Serendipity sessions are truly serendipitous in that our direction is informed by the particular experiences of out participants each week. Love it!

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is our first Edublogs “Fine Focus” session for 2012, where we invite you to share your favourite online survey tools in “What survey was that!” join us on Thursday January 12^th at 23:00 GMT/UTC the time for you will vary depending on your timezone (check yours here) Thursday afternoon/evening in the USA, late night Thursday in Europe, and Friday morning January 13^th in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.