programming

Friday, August 29th

Example: Using an Online Survey to Improve education

Situation

The department of Healthcare Management at the University of Alabama annually sends a survey to its recent graduates. The survey is used to obtain feedback on the program in order to stay on top of the accredidation process.

The Problem

The department head decided that it might be prudent to move to an online survey after seeing the benefits of a completely electronic setup through his role in the UTCA project. He also liked the idea of being able to add and remove questions, change answer types, and modify question or answer text himself, without having to call a webmaster or other internet specialist.

Enter the Programmer

The real challenge for us was to allow non-technical people to manage their survey, with zero help from us, the designers. Since the questions could conceivably change at any point, we set it up to store them in the database, and have them load when someone is taking the survey. After receiving a copy of the survey they were planning to use, we defined the question types they would be using (multiple choice, true/false, short answer to name a few). From there we created a wizard or sequential process for them to follow to create the survey. The wizard guided them through each step necessary to properly add a question, and would not allow one to be added unless all criteria were met. Then we created an Modify and Delete section to allow for corrections and outdated questions. It can also handle conditional response questions. Those are questions that take you to additional questions based on your answer (e.g. If you answered 'Yes' to question 5 skip to part C). Finally, responses are stored in the database, and can be easily downloaded in an Excel friendly format for easy analysis.

Summary

This example demonstrates how software can be used to allow people of varying skills concerning computers to take advantage of their benefits. Here we had a group that wanted a high degree of control over their application without needing to know the intimate details of web programming and database design. The survey system they have can be used perennially, with independece from "the web guys."


		Friday, August 29th

	Example: Using an Online Survey to Improve education Situation The department of Healthcare Management at the University of Alabama annually sends a survey to its recent graduates. The survey is used to obtain feedback on the program in order to stay on top of the accredidation process. The Problem The department head decided that it might be prudent to move to an online survey after seeing the benefits of a completely electronic setup through his role in the UTCA project. He also liked the idea of being able to add and remove questions, change answer types, and modify question or answer text himself, without having to call a webmaster or other internet specialist. Enter the Programmer The real challenge for us was to allow non-technical people to manage their survey, with zero help from us, the designers. Since the questions could conceivably change at any point, we set it up to store them in the database, and have them load when someone is taking the survey. After receiving a copy of the survey they were planning to use, we defined the question types they would be using (multiple choice, true/false, short answer to name a few). From there we created a wizard or sequential process for them to follow to create the survey. The wizard guided them through each step necessary to properly add a question, and would not allow one to be added unless all criteria were met. Then we created an Modify and Delete section to allow for corrections and outdated questions. It can also handle conditional response questions. Those are questions that take you to additional questions based on your answer (e.g. If you answered 'Yes' to question 5 skip to part C). Finally, responses are stored in the database, and can be easily downloaded in an Excel friendly format for easy analysis. Summary This example demonstrates how software can be used to allow people of varying skills concerning computers to take advantage of their benefits. Here we had a group that wanted a high degree of control over their application without needing to know the intimate details of web programming and database design. The survey system they have can be used perennially, with independece from "the web guys."


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