Surveys are the best feature for educators to use ensure that projects are going smoothly while expectations are being met, and to measure the outcomes of those projects in the form of skill development, employability of learners, happiness of stakeholders, and much more!
Main benefits of surveys:
Asses skill growth and outcomes of learners
Get alerted to potentially off-track projects before it's too late
Gather feedback from stakeholders at any point in the project and not just afterwards
You can quickly build surveys by selecting your target audience, your timing, and by adding an unlimited number of fully configurable questions including multiple choice, short and long written, document, date, true or false, and more. Surveys are then automatically issued on your behalf and you can simply sit back and watch the replies roll in.
General
Target audience
Surveys can be issued to either employers or learners. By selecting either, the audience will be surveyed so long as they are participating in the experience.
Scopes
Depending on the survey you create and what sort of configurations the experiences in your portal have, you may want to issue a survey for every team a learner participates in, or only once per experience no matter how many teams the learner participates in, or once for employers per matched project no matter how many teams are working on that project, etc. These scenarios are available to you with the use of scopes. The full set of options available for scopes are as follows:
Scope | Meaning | Limitations |
Once per team | Employers - For every team working on a project for the employer, they will need to respond to this survey.
Learners - For every team they are a member of, they will need to respond to this survey. | None. |
Once per match | Employers - For every matched project the employer has, they will only need to respond to the survey once regardless of the number of teams that are working on the project.
Learners - Regardless of the number of teams the learner is apart of for a single matched project, they will only need to respond to the survey once for each project. | Cannot be used when the timeline dates are set per team. |
Once per experience | Employers - They will only need to respond to the survey once regardless of the number of matched projects they have or teams that are working on the projects.
Learners - Regardless of the number of teams the learner is apart of with the experience, they will only need to respond to the survey once. | The survey will not have concrete due dates when the timeline dates are set per project or per team. |
When a survey is scoped once per match or once per experience, but the employer or learner is working with / on multiple teams, they will see the survey on each team, but only need to fill it in once which will then mark the survey as complete on their other teams.
Timing & prompts
All surveys are administered to their target audience based on its timing settings, for which there are 5 options:
Before the project starts: if a learner is scheduled to start a project on January 1, and your configured survey timing is "3 days before project start", they will receive the survey prompt on December 29. The number of days before project start can be configured.
After the project kickoff: if a team starts a project on January 1, and your configured survey timing is "2 days after the project starts", they will receive the survey prompt on January 3rd.
During the project: if a learner is scheduled to start a project on January 1, and end on January 31st, and your configured survey timing is "50% project completion", they will receive the survey prompt on January 15th. The percentage of project completion can be configured.
During the project timing is only available when the survey scope is "Once per team"
Before the project submission if a team has an end date of a project on February 15th, and your configured survey timing is "3 days before the project submission they will receive the survey prompt on February 12th.
After the project ends if a learner is scheduled to end a project on January 31, and your configured survey timing is "1 day after project end", they will receive the survey prompt on February 1st. The number of days after project end can be configured.
Survey prompts are sent via email to learners or employers (depending on survey target settings), and link directly to a page where the user can fill in the survey.
Surveys will also appear within the timeline of the team page, so that learners and employers can see when surveys will be administered for that project.
If you create a new survey, it will apply to all teams and employers who have unfinished projects, and will be sent on its scheduled timing. If a survey is created that is scheduled to be sent at the project start, any teams that have already passed the start date will not be prompted to complete that survey.
Required & blocking
Surveys can be marked as required, which will block a user from taking further action until they have replied to the survey. The actions which they are blocked from will depend on the target audience and the timing configured on the survey.
Audience | Timing | Blocked actions |
Learner | Before the project starts |
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Learner | After the project starts |
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Learner | After the project ends |
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Employer | Any |
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For all surveys where the audience is learner, note that all blocked actions apply only to an individual member of a team and not to the team as a whole. This means that once a learner replies to a require survey, they will be able to take the previously blocked action on behalf of their team while the rest of their team members may still have yet to reply to the survey.
Question types
Surveys can contain these question types:
Multiple Choice: Ideal for asking respondents to select one option from a list of predefined answers.
Multiple Choice Grid: When you need to ask a lot of multiple choice questions all with the same set of options.
Marking a multiple choice grid question as required means that every question within the grid is required. If you need to individually set required on a subset of questions from the grid, you will need to use a regular multiple choice question instead.
Checkbox: Useful when you want respondents to select multiple options from a list of predefined answers, allowing for multiple-answer questions.
Date: Great for collecting date-based information, such as event dates or scheduling preferences.
Document: A good option when you require respondents to upload documents, such as resumes, CVs, or other supporting materials.
Number: Appropriate for gathering numerical data, including quantities or ratings.
Linear Scale: Effective for measuring respondents' opinions or perceptions on a scale, such as rating satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 5.
Long Text: Suitable for open-ended questions that allow respondents to provide detailed written responses, making it useful for qualitative feedback or comments.
Short Text: Useful for open-ended questions that require brief answers.
Applying restrictions
You can apply restrictions to number, short text, and long text question types to ensure your survey data is accurate and meets specific parameters. By limiting response lengths, enforcing numerical formats, or requiring specific text patterns, you prevent incorrect or irrelevant entries, making data collection more efficient and analysis easier.
The available restrictions for each question type are:
Number question type
Max value: Limits the highest acceptable number for a response (e.g., Answer must be no more than 100).
Min value: Sets the lowest acceptable number for a response (e.g., Answer must be at least 1).
Short and long text question types
Max length
Restricts the maximum number of characters allowed in a response.
Example: The answer must not exceed 250 characters.Min length
Specifies the minimum number of characters required for a valid response.
Example: The answer must be at least 10 characters.Text contains
Requires the response to include a specific word or phrase.
Example: The answer must contain the word 'marketing.'Text does not contain
Prevents the response from including certain words or phrases.
Example: The answer must not contain the word 'spam.'Regular expression
Ensures responses follow a specific format, such as an email address or Canadian postal code.
Example: View the table below for examples.
Question | Hint text | Regular expression |
What is your Canadian postal code? | "Enter a valid Canadian postal code in uppercase without spaces (e.g., K1A0B1)." |
|
What is your US zip code? | "Enter a valid US zip code." |
|
What is your email address? | "Enter a valid email address, e.g., example@domain.com." |
|
To test and refine your own regular expressions, visit https://regex101.com.
You can use the hint field during survey creation to explain the restriction to the respondent. Answers are validated upon submission, and error messages will be displayed if a response does not meet the set restrictions.
Reply sentiment
For checkbox, multiple choice, and linear scale questions, educators have the option to link the options with either a positive or negative sentiment by clicking the 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' icon. This information is not shown to the end user, but enhances summary reporting about the survey, and allows issues or positive trends to be highlighted.
How To
Create a survey
To create a custom survey for your experience, follow these steps:
Go to your experience "Settings" tab > "Project Management" group > "Surveys" tab.
Click the “Create new” button. You will then have the option to create your survey from a template or create it from scratch. Select “Create from scratch” to create a new survey, or "Create from template" to choose a template from Riipen's recommended surveys.
Enter your survey details including target audience, timing, and questions. If you've chosen a template, the questions will be pre-populated but can be edited.
After filling in the details, click "Submit".
If you are happy with your survey, click "Publish" to finalize it.
After you publish your survey, you will be unable to edit the questions unless the survey has no responses. If later you would like to edit the survey questions, you will need to disable or delete the survey and create a new one.
Once your survey is published, it will appear to any of your selected audience where the timing of the survey is in the future past the time which you published it. This mean learners or employers who have already completed past projects wont see it, but ones who are currently completing or completing projects in the future will see it and be able to reply.
View a survey
You can view any created survey at any time with the following steps.
Navigate to your experience
Click on the "Settings" tab on the experience page
Click on the "Surveys" tab in the "Project Management" group
Click the survey you wish to view
View survey replies
You can view individual replies to surveys by following these steps.
Navigate to your experience
Click on the "Settings" tab on the experience page
Click on the "Surveys" tab in the "Project Management" group
Click the survey you wish to view the replies of
Click the "Replies" tab
You will now see a list of all replies to your survey, and you can click any one of them to see their full reply to all questions.
You can also view a summary of all replies and questions by following these steps:
Navigate to your experience
Click on the "Settings" tab on the experience page
Click on the "Surveys" tab in the "Project Management" group
Click the survey you wish to view the replies of
Click the "Summary" tab
You will now see a summary of all replies for your survey broken down by each question. These breakdowns will include overall trends, sentiment analysis if you assigned sentiment to a question, and have the ability to click into each question to see a full list of all replies to it.
Export survey replies
You can export all replies to a survey by following these steps.
Navigate to your experience
Click on the "Settings" tab on the experience page
Click on the "Surveys" tab in the "Project Management" group
Click the survey you wish to export the replies of
Click the "Replies" tab
Click the 3-dot menu above the table or replies and click "Export to CSV"
CSV exports are performed asynchronously with the resulting CSV being sent to your email when it is ready for download. Depending on the size of the export this may take several minutes.
Edit a survey
You can edit a survey at any time with the following steps.
Navigate to your experience
Click on the "Settings" tab on the experience page
Click on the "Surveys" tab in the "Project Management" group
Click the survey you wish to edit
Click the edit icon
Edit your survey
Click "Submit".
You will only be able to edit the questions of a survey if it is either no publish or has no responses.
Delete a survey
You can delete a survey with the following steps.
Navigate to your experience
Click on the "Settings" tab on the experience page
Click on the "Surveys" tab in the "Project Management" group
Click the survey you wish to delete
Click the delete icon
You can only delete a survey if it has no replies, otherwise you only options is to disable it.
Disable a survey
You can disable a survey to prevent any further replies and to no longer make it visible or be a requirement for the target audience with the following steps.
Navigate to your experience
Click on the "Settings" tab on the experience page
Click on the "Surveys" tab in the "Project Management" group
Click the survey you wish to delete
Click the "Disable survey" button
Enable a survey
If you have previously disabled a survey to but now wish to use it, you can enable the survey to accept replies and make it visible to your target audience once again with the following steps.
Navigate to your experience
Click on the "Settings" tab on the experience page
Click on the "Surveys" tab in the "Project Management" group
Click the survey you wish to delete
Click the "Enable survey" button
Best Practices
Always lean on the side of caution and make a question or entire surveys required unless you really don't care about the reply rate.
For experiences 1 month in length or longer, always have a mid-point check-in style survey which is as simple as "This project is meeting my expectations" as a true / false questions, to anything more complex. The key is to attach sentiment to the question so that you can simply review the overall scores at the mid-point of all projects to ensure learner and employer satisfaction, and then to address any issues that do come up. For even longer running experiences it's good to have check-in style surveys every few weeks.
If you are wanting to measure the impact a project has on learners on a particular skill, always issue a before and after project self-assessment of that skill in a survey to learners while also issuing an after project assessment of it to employers either through a survey or though custom feedback. This helps assess the learners own felt growth while comparing it against the employers own evaluation as a grounding metric.
Coordinate with your portal administrators while crafting outcome based surveys as your portal administrators can create portal level surveys that can be applied to all experiences to ensure that all outcomes are being measured uniformly across the portal.
If you want to measure long term outcomes of the project, you can schedule a survey to be run up to 6 months after the project ends. This is great for asking questions such as "Has this project helped you find employment?".
FAQs
What kinds of survey templates are available?
Every type of survey you can imagine including: mid-project pulse checks, post project skill assessments, post project self-reflections for learners and employers, pre-project self-assessments for learners, pre-project expectation assessments for employers, and many many more. Chances are if you are looking to run a particular kind of survey, there is a template for it.
How can perform deeper analysis of survey replies?
Combining surveys with Riipen's reporting portal can be extremely powerful. Inside the reporting portal you will be able to ask custom questions about your replies, perform advanced statistical analysis, and even export the raw data to be used in other external tools of your choosing.