Surveys (Quizzes)

in Policies
  1. Surveys (Quizzes) will be given each week on Friday. We will accept late quizzes through Sunday.
  2. Surveys are graded as check/no check.
  3. We may check your answers and not give you credit for a quiz if you do not make a legitimate attempt.

We don’t really distinguish between Quizzes and Surveys - I use the term interchangably. They use the Canvas “quiz” mechanism. In Canvas, they are “graded surveys” because we do not keep track of your score, only whether or not you complete it. On this page I’ll use the term survey.

A survey may contain many different types of questions:

  1. Practice questions - of the form you are likely to see on the exam. These questions are designed to test your knowledge of the material. We will provide the answers to these questions after the quiz cutoff (the cutoff is Sunday, so we will release answers on Monday).
  2. Reflection questions - that ask you to think about a topic you have learned about during the week. These are designed to help you think about the topic and self-assess how well you understand it.
  3. Survey questions - that ask you for information that we need.
  4. Feedback questions - these are a chance for you to tell us what you think of class.

We will not grade the surveys. You will receive credit for completing it. We may check your answers to confirm that you made a legitimate attempt. If you do not complete the surveys, your grade may be affected (see Grading).

Sometimes, the surveys will be anonymous (Canvas will tell us who has completed a survey, but will not allow us to connect responses to students). The survey will explicitly say that it is anonymous - by default quiz/surveys are not anonymous.

The surveys are designed to help both you and us:

  • Questions about the material will help you self-assess if you are understanding the material. It will help us get a sense of what people understand (or not) so we can review things as necessary.

  • In an online class, we get less feedback about how things are going. We don’t see puzzled faces. We don’t hear chatter about what aspects of class are (or are not) working. This applies both to the material (what is confusing people) as to course operations (how are things going).

Surveys occur on Fridays. We will release them Friday morning, and they are due by the end of day on Friday (12:01am Saturday is not Friday). We will allow you to turn in late surveys until the cutoff (Sunday, 12:01am Monday is not Sunday).

Research on learning tells us that taking time to reflect on your learning really helps. So, even though we may not be grading your answers, we hope you will take the time to do the reflection questions.