Google Survey Tool: Measure Student Satisfaction for Free

I finally got around to checking out Google's "new" survey tool and I have to say I'm impressed. Not only is it fairly easy to create surveys, Google has made it VERY easy to embed them directly onto a web page or course content page (in an LCMS) and track the live results via, yes, a Google Docs Spreadsheet.

This survey tool is also pretty flexible given the price (um, free with no usage limits) with almost 70 different themed templates and the ability to distribute your survey via email (link or embedded) to a mailing list.

So if you need to create a survey, sign-up for Google Docs (which you have already if you have an Gmail account) and choose New -> Form and then start by choose a question type. I personally like the "Scale" question type which creates a 5 ordered Likert item with very little effort.

One drawback, although I am not sure this isn't true for similar services like Survey Monkey, is that the Google logo displays fairly prominently in the Thank You notice sent to the survey taker after the survey is complete.

A small price to pay, in my opinion, for a darn good free service.