Like I said in my previous blog, I had already made a survey a while ago. I noticed that everybody in my SIG groups had been using the online survey creator, ' Survey Monkey' . I had completed a few peoples surveys before I made my own and most of them seemed very straight forward and easy to answer. They also gave me an idea of the sort off questions I should and maybe shouldn't ask when making my own survey.
I think Survey Monkey is a great way to make a survey as it explains very well how to put the survey together, gives you a variety of ways to choose you would like the questions to be answered (for example, multiple choose, yes/no etc.) and also analyses all the results for you. One of the cons of Survey Monkey is that without upgrading (to where you are required to pay), you can only ask 10 questions. Now, this could be a problem as you might want to ask more than just 10 questions so maybe you would want to think about upgrading for the actual inquiry although something to think about is surveys shouldn't really be too long as people will not take there time to complete if there is pages and pages of questions so depending on how in depth you want to go with the survey, having a limit of questions could actually be a good thing.
I found discussing with members of my SIG group that the surveys that were more to the point and simple questions were the ones that we actually completed. Some surveys asked far too many in depth questions and with just one look at I didn't even bother to complete the survey because it required too much time that I didn't have. The survey needs to be user friendly but still a good length with valuable questions In order to provide you with the correct data.
When Melanie Brown was completing my survey she said that one of the questions that only allowed for one answer needed to be changed. The question was, ' What do you think is more important in a teacher? ' and the answers were Qualifications or Experience. Mel believed both were important and I can see now that my answer box should have been different to just being able to choose one answer.
The good things about Surveys are they are quick and easy ways for people to get involved and you can analyse and see certain patterns emerging. Although sending a survey to someone to complete doesn't always guarantee you a response. Talking to Hannah Stewart, and she also mentions this on her blog, was that she come across a journal discussing the difference between online and paper surveys. I hadn't thought about this until Hannah brought it up but its really interesting. With a paper survey you probably have more chance of receiving a completed survey back if you hand it to them as they will complete it straight away were as online you have to pester people more. Also if you send a group message out to people asking to complete your survey I think many of them will ignore it. I experienced this when I posted a notice on a Facebook group, about 2 people responded, were as when I emailed them directly asking them to take some time to complete my survey I got a lot more responses.
One other thing I am going to think about is who I aim my survey towards. The pilot survey I made was to be completed by students, reflecting on there past experiences from teachers they have been taught by but I think making a survey to be completed by teachers as well would also be very beneficial as it is coming from a different side.
Overall I like the idea of a survey as if enough people take part in completing it you can gather a lot of information.
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