The Student Survey of Instruction is a very important part of the student experience at the college. This survey allows them to give direct feedback about the quality of instruction they received in the courses they took that session. Formerly a paper scantron survey, the need for an online version was required for our hundreds of online courses.
This project was completed in two phases. Phase 1 involved creating the survey using ColdFusion along with an administration area; it was completed in 2004. With the institution’s migration to a new LMS the delivery method for the SSI needed to be updated to integrate directly into online courses. My colleague Michael Carnahan and I turned to Flash Remoting to solve this problem. Phase 2 involved creating a Flash movie that remoted to a ColdFusion component from directly inside instructors’ courses.
The final result was a much friendly user experience for students, less work for instructors to incorporate it in their courses, and a easier backend to manage the thousands of submissions received each session.
