University awards top marks to Snap survey work
August 2004
The University of Aberdeen has recently completed two major surveys involving the whole of its student body to evaluate the quality of courses and also the provision of library and IT services at the institution.
The former was part of Aberdeen's continuous evaluation of courses that provides the opportunity for the 11000 students to fill in a feedback form at the end of each course they take. Since the end of November over 21000 forms have been distributed, collected and scanned into Snap software; at the peak the scanning service was dealing with over 4000 forms per week. This is just for the first semester, the exercise will be starting again at the end of May with a similar number of forms; Snap has been used for this twice yearly exercise since 1999.
Library and IT services are essential student resources and the University runs a specific survey each year to assess how well they are meeting the needs of students. The methods used have varied over the years from a paper-based survey through paper and web based to this year's web-only survey. This reflects the declining response rate from paper versions as students rely more and more on computers for all aspects of their student life.
The ease of switching between paper and web format questionnaires in Snap has given the University considerable freedom in testing out which method achieves the best response.
This flexibility is identified by John Lemon, Senior Computing Adviser, as one of the many features that puts Snap way ahead of the competition, "Every year we review our software options and for the last 5 years we have concluded that we have the best product available. Snap is easy to use and does the job quickly and efficiently."
Surveys play a vital role in determining why applicants decide to accept or reject a place at the University. All new students are invited to feedback their reasons why they chose Aberdeen over their other options. Likewise, applicants who decided against the University are invited to explain why they did so. The information helps the University gain an understanding of how it can become more attractive to prospective students.
Snap has also become a useful classroom tool. The software is widely used by students undertaking field research. It is also being used in the teaching of questionnaire and survey design.
John recently contacted Snap Surveys about an article he was working on for the University bulletin to remind members of staff about the availability of Snap, "We really like the software and every now and then we like to remind people about existing and new features."