Anonymous course evaluation made simple.

April 27, 2009 5:04 AM

What is the simplest way to allow for an anonymous course evaluation? A simple re-mailer would work, but I can't seem to find one.

We've just finished teaching a two semester course at collage, and would like to try anonymous electronic course evaluation.

There's no need to set up a permanent system or anything of that sort; I'm thinking either a web-form or finding a re-mailer. Is there a reliable service one can use for this?

Anonymous comments on a blog runs the risk of someone not noticing that they're still logged in to Blogger or Wordpress or whatnot, but maybe there's a simple way around that?

I want to assure our students that their responses are anonymous on the technical end, but obviously I'm not going to try to circumvent what I'm setting up so there's no need to set up a an overly elaborate system

Maybe encourage everyone to setup a throwaway mail? Not very elegant.

Suggestions for the simplest way to go about this müchos appreciated.

posted by monocultured to education (10 answers total)

Surveymonkey?
posted by starman at 5:08 AM on April 27, 2009

Nice one starman, thanks!

Ideally I'd make it simpler still (for me) — Surveymonkey have a horrid interface; I already have this pretty and simple text document ready for writing in…

(Oh, and there are no multiple choice questions, just open-ended ones, which devalues the webform and analysis tools Surveymonkey offers.)
posted by monocultured at 5:33 AM on April 27, 2009

Surveymonkey has multiple choice questions.
posted by Houstonian at 5:45 AM on April 27, 2009

Houstonian - I think the OP was saying that he doesn't need multiple choice questions; his survey is short-answer only.
posted by muddgirl at 5:51 AM on April 27, 2009

Sorry about that: Yes, as Muddgirl writes I meant that my evaluation doesn't use multiple-choice questions, but rather open-ended / short-answer ones.

Surveymonkey looks very powerful, but I'd settle for prosimian instead of a full monkey.
posted by monocultured at 5:58 AM on April 27, 2009

(I use surveymonkey for reviews of my own courses, it's worked well and includes short answers. I just use the free service, which is limited to 10 questions -- fine for my needs.)
posted by miyabo at 6:49 AM on April 27, 2009

Google docs supports generating simple forms, which can be short-answer in nature, including the option for "paragraph text" input. It has the option to collect email addresses if you and your students are all part of a Google Apps for Domain, but otherwise input is stored anonymously in a Google Spreadsheet.
posted by Partial Law at 6:54 AM on April 27, 2009

Have them email the department secretary, who can compile the answers.
posted by Picklegnome at 7:15 AM on April 27, 2009

The monkey pissed me off with the ten question limit which we'll tell you about once you reach the limit so you might as well pay, and Zoomerang doesn't have any free summery tools.

Partial Law, looks like Google once again clinches it. Thanks for the suggestions all!

(Btw, I'm surprised that remailers are so hard to come by. What's up with that?)
posted by monocultured at 7:26 AM on April 27, 2009

Survey Gizmo is better than Survey Monkey, if Google Docs doesn't do everything you want it to.
posted by expialidocious at 1:51 PM on April 27, 2009