MIE Spotlight: Surveys

“You can’t do online surveys,” said a colleague to me recently, much to my surprise, “in Office 365 like you can in Google Forms.” As a newly minted Microsoft Innovative Educator, this didn’t seem accurate to me. Some quick investigation revealed that you CAN create online surveys using Excel Online, which is a component of Office 365. If you are a Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE), or your District uses Office 365, then you will want to explore this!

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Classroom Spotlight: Online Data Collection

In a previous blog entry, we discussed how powerful infographics can be to illustrate data. What if students (or staff) were able to collect actual data using an online survey tool and then use that data for their infographic? Gillian Riley points out the following:

The benefits of spreadsheets are that they help students manage working with complex sets of numbers and save time by allowing for quick calculations. This frees students to ask more “what if” questions and may increase motivation because students can manipulate spreadsheet graphics. Spreadsheets have four main functions students can explore: data collection, creating graphs, plotting timelines, and recording surveys results. . . .For students data collection can be used to record homework grades, class assignments, and test scores to keep a tally of the overall class grade. Spreadsheets can also be used to keep track of a budget for a hypothetical business, club, or personal living expenses, or specific information from a science lab. (Source: Using Spreadsheets in the Classroom)

With Office 365 for staff and students, you can use OneDrive.com and Excel Online to create an online survey with data being fed into an Excel spreadsheet automagically. Read on to see how.

Quick How-To: Create an Excel Online Survey

Step 1 — Go to OneDrive.com and select Excel Survey from the drop-down, as shown below:

Step 2 — Create the Survey and Add Questions.

When you complete it, you will be able to View the Survey.

And then you can SHARE SURVEY and CREATE LINK, which you can shorten to something manageable (e.g. http://1drv.ms/whatever ).

This is what that looks like:

Finally, you can see data online in your spreadsheet:

Step 3 — Modify the Survey

If others need to be able to interact with the data, you can share the Excel Online spreadsheet with them. If you need to modify the survey itself, that’s pretty easy, too.

And, that’s it! If you’d like to see a video of the process, you can watch this one.

Resources

• Video Tutorial: Creating a Survey with Excel Online