Distributing a Bulk Survey - Manual Course Selection Method

This article goes over how to add a bulk survey with the manual course selection method.

If you have not already done so, please see the previous article for an overview of bulk surveys, and this article if you would like to add a bulk survey with the CSV upload selection method.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Step 1: Configure the bulk
• Step 2: Select which Courses to Distribute the Survey in 
• Step 3: Configure Embedded Data Fields (if applicable) 
• Step 4: Plan your Assignment 
• Step 5: Configure your Assignment Grading Settings
• Step 6: Enable Notifications - Announcements & Reminders (optional)
• Step 7: Review Summary and Publish your Bulk Survey 

Step 1: Configure the bulk

On the first page of the bulk survey wizard, you will select which survey to distribute. Click on the dropdown box from the image below where it says “Survey” and pick which survey you would like to distribute in bulk.

If you do not see the survey you want to add, go back to your institute or department surveys page and be sure that your survey was connected to the Qualtrics LTI as a “Bulk Canvas assignment” survey type. 

Choose which course type you would like to distribute the survey to. When choosing blueprint courses, custom text embedded data fields and notifications (announcements and reminders) will not be available.

Select the "Manual selection" option as your preferred method for choosing courses. Once you have selected which survey you want to distribute in bulk and the “Manual selection” button, click the “Next” button in the bottom right hand corner to go to the next step. 

Step 2: Select which Courses to Distribute the Survey in 

Select the courses you want to distribute the survey in by clicking on the “+ Courses” button.

Add the courses you want to include to distribute the bulk survey to, and then proceed to the next step by clicking the “Next” button. 

If you have to select many courses, it might be better to choose the CSV upload option. Read more about this way of adding courses to a bulk survey in this article. 

See the GIF below:

Step 3: Configure Embedded Data Fields (if applicable) 

The bulk survey wizard will automatically recognize if you have activated a custom text embedded data field for this survey. If that is the case, it will need further configuration in this step. In case you do not have any custom text data fields activated for your survey, this step will automatically be skipped. 

First, select the correct CSV delimiter and whether you want to base the CSV file on Canvas course ID’s or SIS ID’s. You can then download the CSV file template for your custom text data fields by clicking the “Download template” button. 

Once you download the template you can fill in the values of your custom text field(s). In this example, we will show how to use the Instructor's name as an example custom text field. Any other custom text values you would like to use will have the same steps. 

Once you download the template, fill in the Instructor names per course in your CSV file editor. See image below: 

Once you save your file as a CSV with filled in values, you can upload it into the bulk survey wizard by clicking the “Upload CSV file” button shown in the image below: 

Once the CSV file is uploaded successfully, you will be able to see the name of the file you have uploaded underneath the “Upload CSV file” button.

If there are structural errors in the CSV file (e.g., incorrect headers or the wrong CSV delimiter), you will get an error message and will not be able to proceed to the next step until the CSV file is corrected. If this happens, first check that you used the correct CSV delimiter (comma or semicolon), and that your headers are correct. Once the error is fixed, you will be able to proceed to the next step.  

Step 4: Plan your Assignment 

In this step you can configure the creation date, publish date, due date, and survey availability times as shown in the image below. Note that the available from and until dates essentially function as when the assignment will be “unlocked” and could be accessed by students. The due date must be within the range of when the assignment is available. 

Only the creation date is required. However, if you neglect to enter a publish date, you won't be able to adjust it later. As a result, instructors will need to publish the assignment themselves, removing your control over this process.

Once you are happy with your planning, you can choose if you would like to allow instructors to opt-out. This will allow instructors to remove the assignment with the bulk survey from their course without affecting the other courses that the bulk survey is in.

Instructors can opt out of the bulk assignment only when it is not yet published.

Step 5: Configure your Assignment Grading Settings

On this step you can give your bulk assignment a name, set the available points, and choose how you would like to display the grade (percentage, complete/incomplete, points, letter grade, GPA scale, or not graded). These are the same settings that you would configure when making a regular Canvas assignment, but here you are doing it for every assignment that will be generated with this bulk survey. It is important to give at least 1 point in the points section, and if you would like the assignment to not be counted towards the final grade, you can click the checkbox below the grade display that says “Do not count towards the final grade”, see the image below:  

Step 6: Enable Notifications - Announcements & Reminders (optional)

In the notifications section, you can enable both announcements and reminders. In order to enable the announcements and reminders for your bulk survey, click the toggle button as shown in the image below. Note that if you are creating a bulk survey for blueprint courses, it is not possible to enable notifications in this step. 

Once the announcements and reminders are enabled, you can select the dates and times for each by using the included date picker. You can also give each announcement and reminder a title and message.

Announcements are sent only once and to every student in the course, whereas reminders can be sent up to five times but will only be sent to students who have not yet completed the survey.

We recommend inserting the survey link in the announcement and reminder messages. This way, when students receive the notification they will be able to go directly to the survey.  

Once the announcement is set, click over into the "Set reminders" tab.  You are able to set up to five reminders by clicking the “+ Add reminder date” button.

Once you have set the announcements and reminders to your liking, click the “Next” button in the bottom right hand corner. 

If you use similar notifications frequently, you can create default announcement and reminder messages. You can do this in the Qualtrics LTI by going to your Institute surveys home page, clicking the Menu button in the top right corner, then clicking “Settings.”  In the “Survey notifications” section, enable survey notifications by clicking the toggle button. Then you can go between the “Default announcement” and “Default reminder” tabs and write your default messages there (see image below). 

Step 7: Review Summary and Publish your Bulk Survey 

Here you will see a summary of the new bulk survey. This summary will give you a quick look at the settings that you chose and the CSV file that is uploaded. In case you would like to double check if the CSV file is correct, you can click on the link as per the image below. 

If you are happy with your settings and want to generate the bulk survey, go ahead and click the “Generate bulk” button in the bottom right hand corner. If you do not want to generate the bulk survey immediately, click on the “Save as draft” button, which will allow you to adjust the bulk survey at another time before generating it. 

Now you will be able to see your bulk survey in the Qualtrics LTI bulk survey home page (see image below). 

After generating the bulk survey, it will go through the following stages: 

1. Draft: The bulk survey has been set-up, but nothing has happened yet. This is a safe stage to make changes.
2. Validated: The bulk survey has been validated but no assignments have been created yet.
3. Creating: The assignments are currently being created in Canvas 
4. Unpublished: All assignments have been created in all courses, but the assignments are not yet published.
5. Publishing: All assignments are currently being published in Canvas.
6. Live: All assignments have been published and are therefore available for course participants (if the available from date and time has been reached as well)

Other statuses the bulk survey can end up in: 

1. Deleted: The bulk survey has been deleted. When the bulk survey has the status "Draft" or "Validated", it can be deleted because nothing has been created yet. This deleted bulk survey can still be found in the "Deleted" tab. 
2. Reverted: All assignments have been removed from the corresponding courses. In addition, all announcements and reminders which were still planned will be removed as well. Announcements and reminders that already have been sent cannot be removed. The bulk survey is still saved in the history. This reverted bulk survey can still be found in the "Reverted" tab, so you can check the status updates for whether all assignments, announcements, and reminders were successfully removed.

These stages will give you more clarity on the progress of the bulk survey. 

When the survey already created assignments, you are also able to undo the bulk survey which will delete everything the bulk ever created (except for already sent announcements and reminders). To do this, find the bulk survey in the table and under the Action column you will see the delete or revert icon, see below.

To get more information about a bulk survey, you can click the “Bulk survey details” icon. This is where you can find more information about the bulk survey, such as status updates (including errors if something went wrong), summary, courses, and instructors who opted out. See the images below:

In case you need to export the list of instructors who opted out, you can do that here by clicking the “Opt out” tab and then clicking the "Export" button.

If at any point you need to close the bulk survey wizard, we recommend you to save it as a draft first. When going to a previous or next step, the bulk survey wizard will automatically be saved as a draft. However, if you click on the close icon in the top right corner, changes you made in the current step will not be saved. Therefore, we recommend always clicking on the “Save as draft” button before closing the bulk survey wizard. See the image below:

For more information on generating a bulk survey when selecting courses with a CSV file upload, please see this article. If you have any questions about bulk surveys, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager or our Support team for more information.