Why Use Blackboard: Surveys

Most of the communication features that we discuss on this site are of the "one-to-many" type. In other words, posting Announcements, Sending Email via Blackboard, and even uploading course documents into Blackboard as a Course Document Repository involve communication from you to your students. The Discussion Board Forum is a "many-to-many" form of communication, with students talking with and responding to one another. That forum can also provide you with significant feedback about how your students are engaging with your course materials.

You can also solicit such feedback directly from your students by creating surveys in Blackboard. The surveys are anonymous. You'll see summaries of what all students answered to the various questions on the survey, but you won't be able to link particular answers to particular students. The question types for surveys are similar to the ones that you use for graded assessments: Multiple Choice, True/False, Multiple Answer, Ordering, Matching, Fill in the Blank, and Essay (in other words, long answer), along with an "Opinion Scale/Likert" question that pre-populates the typical answer fields for you (Strongly Disagree, Disagree . . . ). Like the Test Manager, the Survey Manager is fairly easy to master, while at the same time being very flexible, in terms of the question types available, ability to create custom response choices, ability to expand or reduce the number of choices available, etc.

As with online exams delivered via Blackboard, the Survey Manager saves you a significant amount of time in processing the survey responses, since Blackboard organizes them for you and provides the summary "Assessment Statistics" as well. You access the survey results through the Grade Center (via the Control Panel); the Grade Center also indicates (with a check mark) which students have taken the survey. You can also download the survey results if you want to do further analysis.

For more information about how to create a survey in Blackboard, see Creating a Survey.


Written by Leslie Harris, originally for the Office of Instructional Technology at the University of Scranton. Revised with permission and adapted to the Bucknell University Blackboard environment. Last revised August 13, 2008.  Please send questions or comments to itec@bucknell.edu.