How do I monitor student responses if I am using Qualtrics during class?

Unlike traditional classroom response tools such as Poll Everywhere, Qualtrics only records responses when a user has completed a survey. This poses a problem if you would like students to work on questions in class and immediately have access to their responses to a given question. 

One workaround for this is to divide your questions into multiple surveys and set up redirects from one survey to another. An example of this setup is described below. 

Multiple Surveys Example

Dr. Doe is teaching English 101: Shakespeare's Birds. In her next class session she plans to pause several times during her lecture and instruct the students to work on some questions in Qualtrics. She plans to take four breaks over the course of the 50 minute lecture. During each break, students will work on 1-3 questions. 

Dr. Doe creates four Qualtrics surveys:

  • Part 1 - Blue Jays (2 questions)
  • Part 2 - Cardinals (1 question)
  • Part 3 - Swans (3 questions)
  • Part 4 - Robins (2 questions)

She organizes these surveys in a folder in her My Projects to make them easier for her to find. 

She opens the "Part 1 - Blue Jays" survey, finds the anonymous distribution link, and copies the link into a text file. She repeats the process for the other three surveys. 

She opens the "Part 1" survey again and opens the Survey Options. She deselects Save and Continue because she wants students to answer the questions in one sitting. Then she selects Redirect to a URL and pastes in the anonymous link that points to the "Part 2 - Cardinals" survey. 

She repeats this for Part 2 (pasting in the link to "Part 3 - Swans") and Part 3 (pasting in the link to "Part 4 - Robins"). 

Before class, she sends the link to the "Part 1 - Blue Jays" survey to her students. During class, she instructs the students to open the link and answer the two questions in Part 1. Students answer the questions and click the Next button. 

After giving the students a few minutes to answer the two questions in Part 1, Dr. Doe displays the Public Report in class. It shows student responses to the questions in Part 1. Meanwhile, students have been automatically redirected to the "Part 2 - Cardinals" survey so they will be ready to work on those questions when Dr. Doe takes another question break. 

Below are instructions for setting up a series of multiple surveys to use in class

Preparation Before Class:

Step 1 - Plan your question breaks

Before you start creating your surveys, think about how you plan to use the tool in class. Consider:

  • How many times during the lecture will you stop and ask questions?
  • Will students work on questions independently or in groups?
  • How many questions will students work on before you bring them back together to review answers?

A consult with Educational Technology Services can be helpful during this planning process.

Step 2 - Create your surveys

Create one survey for each question break you plan to take and populate it with questions. You may wish to title them "Part 1, Part 2..." and/or organize them in a folder in My Projects.

Get the link to each survey and copy it into a text document.

  1. For each survey, in the dashboard, click the "Survey" tab (icon is a small clipboard)
  2. Click on the "End of Survey" block at the end of the survey
  3. In the "Edit end of survey" section, under "Messaging" click the dropdown menu and choose "Redirect to URL"
  4. Paste the URL link for the next survey.
  5. Repeat for each survey in the series except the last one

Note: We recommend that you set up no more than 4 or 5 serial surveys, to minimize the work required to set up and maintain the links. 

Sharing the Surveys In Class:

Students will only need the link to Part 1 as they will be automatically sent to each subsequent survey.

Step 2 - Instruct students to launch the survey

Students will go through and answer the questions in Survey Part 1. Let them know they should click "Next" when they are done. When a student clicks "Next," their responses are recorded and they are automatically sent to the next survey part.

Step 3 - Display the results (optional)

Display the Public Report for Part 1 in class. Refresh the report (reload the browser page) to see the latest student responses. 

For help using Qualtrics to set up serial surveys for use in class, contact [email protected]