Course evaluations in Canvas

With the course evaluation tool in Canvas, Canvas is linked to KI Survey and teachers can create course evaluations for their own classes with a few clicks. Students can answer the surveys via Canvas and, in addition, receive an invitation email and reminders from the survey tool.

Facts

  • With just a few clicks, teachers and course administrators can create surveys and course evaluations for their courses directly in Canvas (undergraduate and advanced level).
  • Students respond to the surveys within Canvas and receive information that the survey is open and reminders via email.
  • Reports are created automatically, and teachers, administrators, and students can access them in Canvas. If preferred, you can review and edit the reports before publishing them in the course.

Access

To access the survey, you must be connected to it as an authorized user. If you're not, you'll still see it in the list with the symbol of a padlock. The owner's name of all surveys is shown in the survey list.

Add authorized users when creating the survey directly in the tool in Canvas.

Instructions: Course evaluations in Canvas

When the tool is activated in the course, you can access Course Evaluations in Canvas through the link 'Course Evaluation' in the course navigation.

Dashboard

The dashboard presents all available surveys (if any) for the present course, with information of the survey status and publication dates.

Creating a survey

Step 1 - Select templates

  • It is mandatory to choose a ‘Main template’. The main template defines design and all survey settings, header, footer, introduction text and pre-defined reports. It can also contain questions, but must not. The language in brackets after the survey template name [English] indicates the default language.
  • If you wish, also add content templates. These let you add additional questions to your survey. Hoover over the speech bubble for each template, to see which languages are active for that template.
  • A content template that is not available in the default language of the selected main template will be marked grey, but can still be selected. This is to alert the teacher of the fact that texts might need to be added.

Step 2 - Enter basic settings

Survey name - is fetched from the Canvas course name, and can be edited

The survey is opened: is automatically set to one day after the last date of the course, but can be edited. Start date cannot be earlier than ‘tomorrow’. At the start date the survey will be automatically published and activated. Students that are connected to the course at this time will be added to the survey as respondents.

The survey is closed: at this date the survey will be automatically closed, and thereafter reports generated. The dates are mandatory fields.

Click ‘Create’ at the top of the page to create the survey.

For respondents, please note:

  • If students are added to the course after this time, the teacher must add them as respondents in Survey&Report manually.

Important information about respondets

  • Students that have not accepted the course when the survey is published will be connected as respondents without an email address in Survey&Report.
  • The student’s email address is the connection between the survey tool and Canvas. A respondent that has no email address will not be able to see surveys or reports in Canvas.
  • The teacher can manually add the email address for the student in both systems, to create this connection for students where the email was missing at publication start.

Survey status: Construction

Tab ‘Settings’

When you have added the survey, you can edit all information added in the first step and you can also edit the survey languages. On the top of the page, you can find two buttons:

Publish survey now - publishes the survey immediately, instead of at the date selected under ‘The survey is opened’. The same actions are taken as at ‘The survey is opened’ (see above).

Open in SR - If allowed in the LTI settings the teacher can click this button to open the survey tool in a new tab in the same web browser. The user will automatically be logged into the program. Changes made in survey name, content or publication date in the survey tool, will be visible in Canvas (it is the same survey, to which changes can be made from both places).

The user can add additional teachers as authorized users to the survey in the survey tool. By doing so the added teachers can also see the survey in the course in Canvas, and thus cooperate on the survey also there.

Survey status: Construction

Tab ‘Content’

Please note: This is not a necessary step: the survey can already be completely ready after selecting templates in step 1.

All questions that have been added to the survey are presented on this page, together with header, footer and introduction text that have been fetched from the main template. If desired, the teacher can here modify the questions and the pages. The templates used defined which changes can be made to the existing questions.

With the buttons on the top of the page it is possible to add or remove templates, add and delete pages and view the survey.

Add questions

In addition, the teacher can add new questions using the icon with a white cross in a green box. Following question types are available for creation of new questions:

Single-choice

  • Yes/no
  • Radio buttons
  • Rating

Multiple-choice

  • Check Boxes

Text

  • Field

Informational texts

  • Text

Any question types the teacher does not have the right to use according to the user’s user groups in Survey&Report, will be hidden.

More advanced editing of the survey

If you wish to make more advanced editing of the survey, or to use question types not available in Canvas, click the icon on the top of the page ‘Open in SR’ to continue editing in the survey tool instead.

For help on the settings and functions on this page please see the help in Survey&Report.

Log in as a student

Links to a student’s surveys is presented in the Canvas ‘To-do’. A student can click a ‘To do’ in order to reach the survey.

By clicking the button for the survey tool the student will see a list of surveys for the selected course. Each survey displays information on if the student has replied or not and publication status. Surveys that have not yet been published are hidden. The student can click a survey to answer (the same link is presented as the one sent from the survey tool).

The second tab lists all reports that are available to the student for that course. The student can click a report to view it.

For each survey, information is displayed about the dates during which the survey can be answered, as well as information about whether the student has answered the survey or not. The student can save their response and continue later.

The 'Reports' tab shows all reports available to students in the course. The student can click on a report to view it.

Active and closed surveys

The teacher has corresponding rights as in Survey&Report as to which changes can be made to a survey after the construction phase is passed.

Reports

After the survey is closed, reports can be automatically generated. You decide if reports shall be published and made available in Canvas. The second tab lists all reports that are available to the teacher for that course.

Reports are automatically generated after the survey is closed and can be viewed directly in Canvas. Under the 'Reports' tab (1), all reports available to teachers in the course are displayed. In addition to being viewed directly in Canvas, reports can also be downloaded in PDF format.

Some reports are automatically published for students in Canvas. You can control which reports are visible to students through the KI Survey main tool. More information about that is provided below.

The following reports are displayed by default:

  • Course evaluation without free-text answers (also visible to students - Short)
  • Course evaluation with free-text answers (not visible to students - Full)