How to Create a Blackboard Survey
CREATING A SURVEY
     When you create surveys in Blackboard, the Blackboard software creates an entry for each student in the spreadsheet gradebook. Then when the student completes the survey, a grade is entered in the spreadsheet. In a quiz, the instructor can click on the student's grade in the online gradebook and see the student's answers for each question. Surveys, however, are anonymous. The spreadsheet indicates that the student has completed the survey, but the results of the survey do not indicate what a particular student's response is. Thus surveys are useful for determining students' preferences for a particular type of assignment or learning demographic information about your students. The Assessment Manager in the Control Panel allows you to create a survey with only one type of question or a variety of types: multiple choice, fill in the blank, short answer, ordering, etc.

CREATING THE SURVEY
    To create a survey, follow these steps:

  1. Click on the Control Panel button on the navigation frame on your course home page.
    Control Panel

  2. When the Control Panel appears, look for the Assessment area on the right side of the screen. Click on the "Assessment Manager button to create a survey:
    Control Panel

  3. When the Assessment Manager appears, click on the "Add Survey" button:
    Add Survey

  4. The screen will then refresh, and the "Assessment Properties" page will appear, as shown below. Use a short title to save room in your gradebook. Then click the "Submit" button.
    Assessment Properties

  5. After you submit your survey title and description, a new "Assessment Properties" page will appear, as shown below. On this page you will enter the instructions in the text box. Click on the "Submit" button when you are through, and the instructions will then appear at the top of the survey itself.
    Instructions

  6. After you have created the survey instructions, the "Assessment Builder" page will appear, and you will click the "Add Item" button to create survey questions.

  7. When the "Add Question" screen appears, choose the type of question that you wish to create. Be sure to click the "Submit" button at the bottom of the screen after you click on the type of question from the selection box. Recommendation: For a survey, create a multiple choice question. With this type of question, you can use "most of the time," "occasionally," "not usually," or a similar series of choices for feedback from students. You can then follow up this question by adding another type of question, the "short answer/essay," to ask the student for comments or explanation.

  8. After you click the "Submit" button, the following screen will appear. Use this screen to create the question and responses as suggested above.

  9. Scroll to the bottom of the screen to select the option that is most appropriate for you at the time, to create another mutiple choice question or a "short answer/essay" question, or to preview the survey. After you either add another item or preview the survey, you will have the option to make the survey available. Either option will save the work that you have done on your survey so far. You can always return later to complete the survey and make it available.

  10. If you do decide to make the survey available, you will have the option to create an announcement so that students can complete the survey from the "Announcements" page or to create a link to the survey in either the Course Information, Course Documents, or Assignments section of the course or in a folder in one of those sections. Before you create the survey, you can create a folder titled "Surveys" or "Quizzes and Surveys" in the "Assignments" section of the course. Then when you click on the option to "create a link" to the survey, you will see the option to select this new folder. You will also have the option to make the survey available during a certain time period in your course. Note: If later in the course you decide to give students extra time to work on the survey, you can go to the "Assignments" section where you created the "Quizzes and Surveys" folder, enter the folder, and modify the "item" by changing the available dates. You will not be able to change those dates or modify anything else about the survey except for the title, descriptions, and instructions from the "Assessment Manager" in the Control Panel.

MAKING A SURVEY UNAVAILABLE
     Whenever you create a survey, you also create the record-keeping system for that quiz. Thus once a student takes a survey, the result is stored in the student's gradebook and in your online gradebook that is available through the Control Panel. If you ever return to the Assessment Manager and make the survey unavailable, you will remove all students records that cannot be retrieved. Occasionally, however, you may wish that you could make a quiz unavailable. For example, you may wish for students to have three days only to complete a survey. After that time you would like to make the survey unavailable to students who did not meet the deadline. There is only one way that you can do this:
  1. DO NOT return to the Assessment Manager to make the survey unavailable. That will erase all records.
  2. INSTEAD, use the Control Panel again but enter the Assignments section of the Page Editors and open the "Quizzes and Surveys" folder.
  3. Then click the Modify button beside the name of the survey.
  4. Then check the box that says "not available." This will prevent students from seeing the "take quiz" button in their "Quizzes and Surveys" folder in the Assignments section but will preserve the survey and all its records in their Gradebook and your Spreadsheet (via the Control Panel).

CLEARING A SURVEY ATTEMPT
     Sometimes a student will enter the "Quizzes and Surveys" folder in the Assignment section of a course and click on the "take quiz" without completing the survey. Other times a student will complete the survey but not click on the "Submit" button at the end of the survey. And occasionally a student will lose the Internet connection while completing a survey. In any of these cases, the next time the student attempts to take the survey, he or she will receive a message that he or she has already taken the survey. To make a survey available to the student again, do the following from your course:
  1. Click on Control Panel.
  2. Click on Online Gradebook.
  3. Click on Spreadsheet.
  4. Scroll down the screen until you see a red asterisk or a "lock" icon.
  5. Click on the red asterisk.
  6. Near the top of the screen, click on the "Clear Attempt" button.
  7. Near the top of the screen, click on the "Return to Course" button.
  8. Click on the Communication button and then the "Send E-Mail" button.
  9. Then send an e-mail message to the student informing him or her that the survey is now available.

CREATING A GRADEBOOK
     Whenever you use the Control Panel Assessment Manager to create a survey and then make that survey available, the Blackboard software also creates an entry in the gradebook for that survey. Then when students are enrolled in the course and take a survey, their grades are recorded in the gradebook. When you click on the Control Panel and then the "Online Gradebook" link, you can see the gradebook by clicking on "Spreadsheet" link. Once a student has taken a quiz, you can change a student's grade (if you decide that one of your questions actually could have two correct answers, for example) by clicking on a student's grade underneath the survey title. You can then change the grade for a question and then submit the grade change by clicking on the "Submit" button. For a survey, you can leave the grade (number of points) blank, or you can award the student a certain number of points.

For other types of learning activities or assessment instruments, such as discussion group activities or reports, you will have to create a gradebook entry if you want to record a grade for that activity or assessment. You do this by clicking on the "Spreadsheet" link in the Online Gradebook. Then you click on the "Add Entry" button at the top of the screen. You will then type a name for the entry and then choose a type. You will also enter the maximum number of points that you will award for this entry. You will then click the "Add Spreadsheet Entry" button.

Suggestion: Give some thought to the naming of entries to make them easy for you to view. Blackboard will organize them in numberical order first followed by alphabetical order: Q01 will be ordered before Q11; D01 will be placed before the "Q" entries. Notice the brevity of the entries; "Q" and "D" stand for quiz and discussion, for example. Use short titles if you have more than 10 columns in your gradebook.

Once students complete an assignment and you evaluate it, you can then open the spreadsheet in the Online Gradebook and click on "Edit" under the name of that assessment or activty. You will then see a column of textboxes marked with each student's name. You will then enter each student's gradeand then click the "Update Grades" button at the bottom of the column.

To change the name of a gradebook item or to change the point value from the one that you originally assigned when you created the entry, click on the "Modify Entry" button at the top of the spreadsheet and enter the correct title or number of points.