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A Critical Assessment of Online Survey Tools

This paper provides an overview of the functionality of online assessment tools from a practitioner’s standpoint. Basic services of these tools are described as well as a comparative review of several representative tools. We also provide the reader with a set of guidelines for making their own decisions about such tools as well as discuss the advantages and disadvantages of these tools in helping to facilitate high-quality assessment. Introduction In the climate of “No Child Left Behind”, limited resources and the overall drive for accountability of all public programs the need for assessment has never been greater. Assessment refers to gathering data and/or information that measure the impact of a certain activity relative to its objectives (Scriven, 1991). The purposes of assessment are varied and depend on one’s perspective (Dietel, Herman and Knuth, 1991; Linn, 1993; Nitko, 2001; Scriven, 1991). Assessment takes many forms depending on the outcomes that one wishes to assess. For instance educational policymakers use assessment to set standards, monitor the quality of education, or formulate policies, while teachers may use assessment to perform individual diagnosis of performance problems, monitor overall student progress and to plan and improve curriculum and teaching. Administrators of pre-college and college level STEM (science, technology, engineering or mathematics) outreach programs may use assessment to measure whether activities meet stated goals, monitor the quality of programming, and to plan and improve continuing activities. Undergraduate students in an engineering curriculum may be assessed on their ability to provide solutions to a design problem; high school students that participate in an orientation to STEM careers may complete pre and post selfreport instruments designed to assess their motivation to pursue a STEM career and their knowledge of STEM careers. The latter example would likely be implemented via a participant self-report survey. Although the assessment process has many components (e.g. defining the objectives of the activity / intervention to be assessed, developing assessment instrumentation in alignment with those objectives), developing, distributing and collecting those data are a significant portion of the process. The expense can be prohibitive for small programs or activities. The recent advent of online assessment survey tools can facilitate the data gathering aspects of the process.