What are my options for collecting this type of data?

January 27, 2023 11:11 AM

How do I collect data (same questions/datapoints each time) regarding a constantly changing list of students assigned to a dynamic list of staff that changes weekly, on the scale of about 120 staff members? What form/platform/survey/tool should I be looking at?

Our school is working on a new project that will require weekly collection of certain data points regarding specific students by specific staff. The students assigned to each staff member will change each week, but the questions and data points regarding a student will be the same each time. We have approximately 120 staff members that will need to do this so manually making the forms isn't really an option. I will have a sheet that has each person and the assigned students - is there a survey/form/data collection platform or tool that can take input like that and present a student list and questions to each staff member dynamically?

Here's an example (assume that the same questions are asked about all students):

Week 1
Staff Member AB
-Student J.A.
-Student S.S.
-Student E.B.

Staff Member CD
-Student E.B.
-Student A.D
-Student K.B.


Week 2
Staff Member AB
-Student J.A.
-Student K.B.

Staff Member CD
-Student E.B.
-Student A.D
-Student K.B.
-Student J.A.
-Student J.W.
-Student C.S.

Staff Member EF
-Student J.A.
-Student J.W.

And so on...

posted by _DB_ to Technology (3 answers total)

Here's how I would do this. I would use a Google form to set up the questions -- one form per student -- it would be easy to set this up in Google forms if you have a list of the student's names.

In the form, you would ask for the date and the name of the staff member filling out the form. You would not have to create each form manually. I would link the forms to a Google sheet. The data from the forms will be saved in the Google sheet, and will contain the student's name, the date and the staff member filling it out. That gives you all the data you need to analyze the data -- do you want to look at all the data for a single student? do you want to look at all the data for a given week? do you want to look at the all the data for a single staff member? You can crunch the data in the spreadsheet in any of those ways, and more.

One more piece you would probably need is a Google sheet that tells the staff who is assigned to them in a given week. That would be a list of the student names, with a column for the link to their form, and columns for each week. In the week columns, you would put the name for the staff member the student is assigned to for that week. Staff members could then open the sheet, go to a column for a given week, filter by their name, and follow the links for each student assigned to them.

The difficulty with this approach is that you would have to carefully assign permissions and views so that the data doesn't get corrupted. As long as you do that with care, the above should work.
posted by OrangeDisk at 12:52 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

If you have someone actively managing the student assignations, you could have a picklist for each staff that is associated with a range of cells, then you would drop in the students assigned to that staff member in that cell range. Then on the form itself the staff would be able to select from the students assigned to them for that work.

However, I think the simplest solution would be to have a large single roster of students and do a picklist for the whole group. Then on the form the staff would just start to type in the name of the student they are submitting for until they see the correct name and select that.

When all is said and done, each form submission will create a new row on your main spreadsheet containing date, staff member, student name, and responses to the questions.
posted by Think_Long at 1:39 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

There are a lot of possibilities and not likely a really clear off the shelf solution. Further to that, I'm wondering if you can provide more info on:
- where and in what format is the information concerning staff-student assignments stored now?
- what is the desired output format for your survey answers? What needs to be done with them?
posted by lookoutbelow at 6:02 PM on January 27, 2023