Survey Monkey
Last updated
Last updated
Survey Monkey is an online based survey generator that allows you to create a survey and monitor the responses of the survey takers at all times. Survey Monkey can be used for school, personal, or business/organizational surveys. Survey Monkey was founded in 1999, by Ryan Finley (SurveyMonkey, n.d.). According to surveymonkey.com, 99 percent of Fortune 500 companies use Survey Monkey due to their ease of use, affordability, and ability to view responses instantly.
Survey Monkey can be used for personal, school, or business/organizational purposes. Survey Monkey makes it easy to create an account and use. Below, I have provided snips and explanations of each step in creating a Survey Monkey account and using your account to create a survey.
To begin creating an account, click the “SIGN UP” link in the upper right-hand corner of your screen.
The “SIGN UP” link will take you to a screen where you are prompted to enter your name and create a password. If you choose, you can sign in with Office 365, Facebook, LinkedIn, or a Google account. For this assignment, I will be creating a new account; however, depending on your needs you can choose to use one of those accounts as your sign in.
Once you have created a username and password, you will be asked the purpose for your account. You will select one and then click the “CONTINUE” button at the bottom of the screen.
Based on your previous selection, you will be asked a few more questions. For this particular project, I chose the Academic choice in the previous section. Survey Monkey is now asking my role (student, administrator, educator) and at which type of institution (high school, four-year college, etc.).
Survey Monkey will then ask you what you plan on gathering data for. I selected “Just for Fun” for this assignment, as I really don’t need to conduct research for this purpose.
You are now ready to create your first survey! If you are creating this survey for a business/organization and will need to upgrade your membership to a paid membership, you will click on the “UPGRADE” section in the upper right corner of your screen. I will not demonstrate that for this project, but it is a very simple process, just follow the instructions on the screen.
If you scroll down, there are templates for surveys you can send out based on your needs and what you are surveying. You can either view the most popular templates, or you can click on the “ALL TEMPLATES” prompt and it will give you a list of templates based on your survey. You may also click the “START FROM SCRATCH” prompt and you will create your own survey. See an example of some templates below.
For the purpose, I selected the “Customer Satisfaction” template. To select a template, you put your cursor over the template, click “QUICK VIEW” and then “USE THIS TEMPLATE”. Once you click “USE THIS TEMPLATE”, your survey has been created and you can edit it to fit your needs. To edit a question in the created survey, you just hold your cursor over the question and many different options will pop up, including edit, options, save, etc. You can add a question at the bottom of the screen above the “DONE” option. Once you are ready to complete your survey, click “NEXT” at the top right of the screen, above question one.
You will be asked how you would like to collect responses for your survey.
I chose the “Get Web Link” option and Survey Monkey generated a web link for me to share for people to access my survey.
I am now ready to send my URL out and I can view my responses as people take my survey. You can click the “ANALYZE RESULTS” in the middle of the screen and it will take you to your survey with the number of responses for each question and the percentage of the respondents that chose each option.
Congratulations, you have created your first survey!
This technology tool can be used by trainers/teachers in multiple ways. They can create surveys for research they are conducting. I have had many Professors that have provided their personal research to aid in class discussion. To supplement their findings or create their own findings, teachers could use Survey Monkey to gather data to support their research.
Another way Survey Monkey can be used by the trainer/teacher is to gather feedback about their course from their colleagues and other professionals. By asking what others think about their course, teaching style, etc. they can gather important information that colleagues wouldn’t just say.
As a trainer, you probably host training events. You can create a survey to ask the attendees how they perceived your training event, what they liked/disliked, how you can improve your next training event, etc.
Another way to utilize surveys as a teacher/trainer is to send a survey out the parents. If you are an elementary or high school teacher, gaining parental opinions is an important step in creating a valuable course template and plan. By creating a survey, you could ask parents what they like and dislike and how to improve your teaching based on what they have seen based on their children’s assignments and homework. There is also an option under the template section “education” where you can ask for contact information. This would be useful to have parents’ answers so you know when to contact them if needed.
Survey Monkey has a template for all of these suggestions, so it would be easy to use a template and add or remove your own questions that fit the personal needs of your survey.
There are many ways that you can use Survey Monkey to support student learning. Trainers/Teachers can create quizzes or exams using Survey Monkey for their students to complete. By monitoring exams or quizzes using Survey Monkey, all of your results are collaborated in one place and easily viewable.
Survey Monkey can also be used to gather student’s feedback about particular events, assignments, courses, etc. Gathering student’s feedback is an essential step in creating a course that is truly beneficial for the students. A trainer could also create a survey asking feedback for the training course and what the trainee really learned. It is important to gather feedback so they know what the majority of the trainees took away from the session, so they can achieve the main training goals and make modifications as needed.
Student learning can also be enhanced by creating a survey to find out what students know about the topic before the lesson, or as pre-course evaluation of what the students/trainees know before the course. It is important to create a pre-evaluation in order to teach according to their needs and previous knowledge.
Students can utilize Survey Monkey for a few reasons. They can create surveys to conduct research about a topic they are studying, the can send out a survey for current clients of a particular services, they can gather their own data for a research project, or they can create a survey to ask class mates about a certain topic or course they are required to take.
Last semester, I was in a course that required us to conduct research in order to complete a project for a local business. We were able to obtain an email list of their clients and we used Qualtrics, a survey generator similar to Survey Monkey, to gather data about current user’s opinions and satisfaction. Survey Monkey could have been used, but we had more than 100 respondents and ISU’s College of Business is with Qualtrics, so we were able to utilize that resource.
By conducting research and students creating surveys to send out, it can substantially improve the quality of their data collection and research and Survey Monkey provides an easy and affordable way to do so.
I conducted all of my research and gathered all of my data directly from www.surveymonkey.com. This is the direct link to create an account and survey and it walks you through step by step. It is not difficult and should be completed within five to ten minutes, depending on how long you take to edit or create survey questions.
There are additional tutorial and help videos on www.youtube.com if you are still in need of help. You can type in “SURVEY MONKEY” in the search bar and tutorial videos will appear. Options ranging from tutorial, how to, how to get started, etc. are available via this link.
Survey Monkey. (n.d.). Retrieved January 24, 2018, from www.surveymonkey.com
Name of Tool
Website URL
Cost
Download or Web-based
1 sentence description of the tool
Survey Monkey
www.surveymonkey.com
$0 – limited access (10 questions per survey, can see 100 responses)
Web-based
Survey Monkey is an online survey program that allows you to create surveys for personal, business, or school use.
