Surveys and Questionnaires
As part of ALT's research mission, we have prepared numerous surveys, questionnaires, and research instruments in the course of our investigations.
eCore® Surveys:
eCore® Student Profile
At the beginning of each term during the pilot phase of the eCore project, students were asked to complete the eCore Student Profile, one of three online research surveys ALT requested of the students. This instrument collected data on students' goals and aspirations, their need for support services, their reasons for choosing online learning, and information on their technical skills and their ability and means of connecting with the Internet. Besides presenting a clearer picture of the types of students attracted to eCore, it provided valuable information which was used in developing services and planning future course development.
eCore® Student Profile (pdf)
eCore® Student Services
At the beginning of each term during the pilot phase of the eCore® project, students were asked to complete the eCore® Student Services Questionnaire, one of three online research surveys ALT requested of the students. This instrument investigated the degree of student satisfaction with six categories of online services: Advising, Registration, Online Bookstore, Test Proctoring, Help Desk, and Library Services. The questionnaire provided valuable information, mandated by SACS, which requires parity among all student services, whether the students are on-campus or online.
eCore® Student Services (pdf)
eCore® Course and Faculty Evaluation
System and institutional policies require that all courses undergo student course and faculty evaluations, and eCore was not excluded from this requisite. The "historical" survey included questions related to student access and satisfaction with the online services (similar to those asked in the Student Services Questionnaire). The "revised" survey was the last iteration of the survey used in the pilot program, before it was transferred to the UGA for administrative control.
eCore® coreval_historical (pdf)
eCore® coreval_revised (pdf)eCore® Faculty Self-Evaluation
The faculty and course evaluation surveys underwent a constant evolution as the program matured and grew from a small pilot program of a few dozen students and a few courses and sections to a program of nearly 1500 students and 50 courses and sections. Courses are still being designed and added to the program. The issues of primary concern in the early stages of its development lost their relevance or poignancy to those necessary in a more mature and on-going program.
Below are the surveys used during the five-year eCore ® pilot:
- Instruction and Student Issues Survey for Faculty (pdf) - designed to evaluate and revise course content and course structure, to estimate the number of hours faculty devoted to various instructional activities, to judge the effectiveness of various aspects of faculty training, and to gain critical measures of feedback on the level of interaction within the courses.
- Administrative Support and Infrastructure Survey for Faculty (pdf) - in conjunction with the Instruction and Student Issues Survey, this survey was used to improve technical and administrative support for each course and to improve faculty training.
- eCore ® Faculty Survey (pdf) - combined elements of the first two surveys as the administrative and technical glitches early in the program were resolved. This reformulated survey selected a subset of those questions that still provided important information and combined them with questions from the instructional survey.
- Veteran eCore ® Faculty Survey (pdf) - given to faculty having taught two or more eCore ® courses, focused more on suggestions to improve new faculty training, and asked faculty to reflect on how their methods of instructions had evolved during their tenure as online instructors.
- eCore® Faculty Support and Services Survey (pdf) - during the final stage of our pilot program, the transfer of administrative control to a new entity outside the System Office, the new survey provided individual faculty with more specific information that would benefit them the most, instead of providing critical overarching data that verified the program's success to its administrators.
Faculty CMS Survey:
ALT wanted to establish baseline data on course management systems (CMS) use among University System faculty to provide a method of advising and assisting individual institutions in developing support, services, and training for faculty using WebCT Vista. ALT also wanted to inform campus strategies for encouraging faculty not currently using WebCT to try using it in their instruction planning and implementation. To facilitate the collection of this benchmark data, ALT developed an online survey based on the Educause Center for Applied Research (ECAR) Faculty Usage of CMS Study conducted for the University of Wisconsin System. Additional questions, specifically about the USG, were included in the current survey.
View the Survey (pdf)
Student Information Technology Survey:
After the successful Faculty CMS survey, ALT wanted to follow-up to this important information with a Student Information Technology (SIT) survey, based upon similar studies by ECAR and the University of Michigan. Administering such a survey among USG students would allow ALT to explore how their technological sophistication matches with those of the ECAR national study. The survey will allow ALT to collect and analyze data on three main research areas:
View the Survey (pdf)
- Collect and analyze data on the levels of technology assimilation, expectation, and use among USG students.
- Use data to inform development of support, services, and training within the USG to improve student retention, success, and satisfaction within USG institutions.
- Use data to inform strategies for encouraging USG administration and faculty to adopt study principles within their curricula and courses.