How to create Qualtrics assignments in bulk

Welcome to the user guide for creating a bulk distribution for a survey. This user guide is meant for root-account admins as they are the only ones who have access to the feature. If something is unclear, feel free to reach out to our support here.

The bulk surveys feature is optional, it can be enabled or disabled by the root-account admin. If you don't see the option to create a bulk survey under the 3-dots button, make sure to enable it first in settings which you can also find under the 3-dots button.  

Contents

1. What is the bulk survey feature?
2. How do I turn on the bulk survey feature?
3. How do I create a bulk survey?
4. Managing your bulk surveys
5. Embedded data and bulk surveys
6. How to combine bulk surveys with Canvas blueprints

What is the bulk survey feature?

The bulk survey feature allows you to easily embedded a single survey in multiple Canvas courses without having to visit each respective course to define settings.

How do I turn on the bulk survey feature?

When you want to use the bulk survey feature you first have to turn it on. You can do this by going to the Qualtrics integration in the root-account, clicking on the 3-dots button, and clicking on 'Settings'. This will bring you to the settings page with the following overview. You want to turn on the feature 'Enable the creation of bulk survey assignments'.

Once you have enabled bulk surveys on the settings page you will find 'Bulk surveys' under the 3-dots button. When clicking on 'Bulk surveys' it might give you the following pop-up:

To add the timezone to the app you will have to go to 'Settings' in your admin navigation of Canvas.

Once on the settings page, you can find 'Apps' as one of the tabs.

Clicking on it will give you an overview of all your installed apps, including the Qualtrics integration. The next step is to click on the gear icon on the right.

This will give you a dropdown with an 'Edit' option. When clicking this it will bring us to the settings of the app.

Finally, we want to add person_address_timezone=$Person.address.timezone in the Custom fields overview. You can simply go to the bottom of the Custom fields and past it underneath the last line.

You should now be good to go! If this was a little too complex or it is giving you issues, please contact support@drieam.com and we will help you set it up!

How do I create a bulk survey?

The first step of creating a bulk distribution is setting up the survey. Go through the survey set-up and make sure to link the data fields if applicable. More information on setting up a survey can be found under step 7 of the admin guide.

After the survey the set-up, you can check if the survey is compatible with the bulk survey feature. If the property 'Survey can be copied in Canvas' is equal to Yes, the survey can be used for the bulk survey. If this is not the case, your survey is not suited for bulk distribution. One of the main reasons that a survey cannot be used in bulk is because it contains an embedded data field of the type 'Selection' or it makes API calls for an embedded data field of type 'Fixed'.

Now that your survey is good to go, you can go to the bulk survey overview by clicking 'Bulk surveys' (2) under the 3-dots button (1) in the root-account app. 

After clicking on the Bulk surveys menu item, you will see the overview as displayed in the image below.

To create a new bulk survey, click on the 'Add bulk survey' button at the top right corner.

Now you can start with the four-step-process for creating a bulk survey.

1. Choose survey
2. Schedule bulk survey
   
3. Select Canvas course(s)
   
4. Set Canvas assignment details
   
   

Step 1 - Choose a survey
All the way at the top is step 1 which reads 'Choose survey'. In this first step, you can select the survey you just set up. If your survey is not compatible with the bulk survey feature, it will be grayed out. 

Step 2 - Schedule bulk survey
In the second step, two dates need to be defined. The first date: 'Creation date bulk survey', is the date where the assignments are created in the Canvas courses you select at the third step. These assignments, while available for teachers and faculty in the Canvas courses are not yet published for course participants. 

With the second date 'Publish data Canvas Assignment', you can select the date for when the assignment will be published in the respective Canvas course. This allows you to set-up bulk surveys at an earlier time convenient for you, for example in the preparation weeks before a new semester.

 We recommend creating and publishing bulk surveys out of office hours as it can be quite heavy on your Canvas environment.

Step 3 - Select Canvas Courses
Next, you can select the Canvas courses where the survey should be embedded. Use the filter to easily find the courses that you want the survey to be in.

Always make sure that all courses you would like are in the overview on the right. If there are a lot of courses in a subaccount it might be that they are not all loaded yet when you add them to Courses receiving survey. Scrolling all the way down in the overview of courses on the left will help with loading all your courses.

Step 4 - Define the Canvas assignment details

Lastly, the details for the Canvas Assignment can be defined. Meaning, you don't have to visit each Canvas Course separately for the assignment settings.

For bulk surveys, we create a new assignment group that is called 'Qualtrics Surveys'. If a course has multiple bulks surveys linked to it, we will not create a new assignment group each time, they will all be added to the same assignment group. You also can add a manual set up survey assingment to this assignment group if you want to organize all surveys in a course.

Managing your bulk surveys

Each bulk goes trough four stages as explained below:

1. Draft: The bulk survey has been set-up, but nothing has happened yet. This is a safe stage to make changes
2. Creating assignments: The bulk is now creating assignments in an assignment group for each course selected.
3. Unpublished: All assignments have been placed in courses, but the assignments are not yet published for course participants.
4. Publishing: All assignments are being published and therefore available for course participants.

For each bulk, you see in what stage it's in based on the attached label. Depending on the stage, you can edit or delete created bulks.

In the table of the overview page, you can also find the history of previously bulk surveys. Here you can, for example, check if the survey has been successfully received by all Canvas courses.

How to combine bulk surveys with Canvas blueprints 

Bulk surveys can be combined with Canvas Blueprint Courses. To do so, use the toggle called 'Only show Canvas blueprint Courses' when selecting Canvas Courses. Now, the only courses you can select are blueprint courses. 

Be aware the survey will only be placed inside the blueprint course itself (and not in associated courses).

Only after synchronizing the blueprint course, the survey will be added to associated courses. This set-up prevents any mishaps between the Qualtrics LTI bulk survey feature and the Canvas blueprint feature.

    
Stuck? Need help? Feel free to contact us