BP7_20091113_SurvsWeb2.0Tool

Survs is a collaborative Web 2.0 tool that would be an excellent addition to any research project that requires data collection in the form of surveys, especially for group projects. Survs allows users to create their own surveys (using their templates or by creating your own from scratch), share the survey via email, web link or an HTML code that you can imbed in your project’s website, analyze the data in real time and share the data with team members if desired. I could see this becoming an essential tool for anyone who is requiring their students to complete some type of action research. For example, a college student is researching teachers’ feelings about day long professional development seminars. They receive permission from the school’s principal to email all of the teachers on staff with a request to fill out a brief survey. Using Survs, the student can create a survey with each of the required questions, using a drop down menu, yes or no responses, fill in the blank, etc. The student can then list each teachers’ email address and send a custom message to the group soliciting their response for the survey. Using the analyze tool, the student is able to see in visual graphs and charts how the responses are trending. This can be done in real time, so data can be analyzed at any point during the collection process. The data can also be filtered to analyze a certain subset of information. If you’d like to see the responses from teachers who have earned masters, as long as you asked that question on your survey you will be instantly able to do so. The student can then export that data into standard applications for use offline or for further analysis. Finally, since this may be a group project for this college student, multiple users can access the same survey project to view its progress and individuals can be assigned specific roles such as editor, distributer, analyzer and manager so individuals can be limited to certain tasks as needed. In addition to this, the student can share the individual survey templates for future projects.