How to suggest courses to kids using survey feedback

October 22, 2009 2:44 PM

Is there an online or free software solution for this idea my colleague at school has had? We want to survey kids in our school about their interests and ambitions and use their responses to suggest which courses they should elect for their next year.

I imagine something akin to a Facebook quiz in a similar vein to "What Simpsons character are you?", but it probably needs to be a little more complex than that in reality.

Do any educators or school admins use something in particular for this?

Do other industry professionals have a work-around based on something they do?

Thanks in advance, hive.

posted by man down under to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Not that I know of. However, this would be fairly easy to code using PHP and MySQL. The difficult part would be the algorithm for suggesting courses. Maybe you even have a smart kid at your school who can code this for you?
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:00 PM on October 22

I've used SurveyMonkey before to create various surveys - it's free, pretty simple to use and has many features.
posted by melissasaurus at 3:35 PM on October 22

Foci, or others: If I were to go down the "code-it-yourself" route, could anybody point me in the right direction for specific PHP or MySQL tutorials?

I'm comfortable with XHTML and CSS but PHP and MySQL are a completely different ballgame for me. I'm not against learning, but wouldn't know where to start for this project to become viable.

Melissasaurus: SurveyMonkey handles the survey aspect perfectly well (as does Google Docs forms) but can't handle the automated feedback to the survey taker based on their answers...
posted by man down under at 4:54 PM on October 22

Limesurvey should work. Free, open source, and the features page includes "Conditions for questions depending on earlier answers (Skip Logic / Branching)"
posted by susanvance at 5:48 PM on October 22

This sounds similar to what Hunch does.
posted by msittig at 5:59 PM on October 22

Hunch does seems to go through the right sort of process. Unsure if I can customize at first glance, but I'll have a play around with it.

Limesurvey could also be good - will need to play with it also to see if it works well.

Thanks so far...any other contenders welcome

(I'm also thinking about Excel based work-arounds at the moment, but that might turn out to be an unhelpful tangent.)
posted by man down under at 6:28 PM on October 22