Survey

The Oxford dictionary defines the word survey as a “general view, examination, or description of someone or something” (1996, p. 514). Survey can also be defined as to taking a general or comprehensive view of a situation or area of study. It also means to view in detail, especially to inspect, examine, or appraise formally or officially in order to ascertain condition and value.

Surveys are the most common type of quantitative and qualitative research methods (Fowler, 1993). There are different kinds of surveys: online questionnaire, traditional paper- pencil/hard copy questionnaire, face-to-face interviews, and telephone interviews. There are various types of surveys, including written, oral, or electronic. Electronic surveying has become very popular recently due to the growth of the internet, technology, and programming (Raynolds, Woods & Baker, 2007).

There are many existing paid and free online survey programs. I used an online product called SurveyMonkey to conduct the online surveys from the website

https://www.surveymonkey.com/home/. A simple membership of SurveyMonkey’s account is fully capable of surveying 100 people for 24 multiple choices, open-ended, and Likert type questions. It can also collect the data and send the survey multiple times to the course participants who have not replied to the survey’s initial attempts. I emailed the link to the survey to course participants and then collected and analyzed the data.

83 3.2.2.1 Strengths and weaknesses of electronic survey

Electronic surveys are easy to create, send, collect, and analyze the data. There is less risk of human error in data transfer, coding, and/or decoding. They transfer quickly to and from the surveyor to the person taking the survey. In general, they have a higher response rate with more honest responses that are not influenced by the presence of a surveyor. The weaknesses include the technical problems and technological literacy of the person taking the survey. Another weakness in using the survey method is that if people do not take the survey as soon as they receive it, they may forget about it.

As stated above, online survey system using SurveyMonkey is utilized for this study since the course participants took the online course titled “Assessment and Support for English Language Learners” perhaps indicating a preference for online technology based survey versus hard-copy survey.

3.2.2.2 Conceptual basis for the survey

I have used the PD standards created by the NSDC in 1995 and revised in 2001 for the OPD of teachers to frame some of the survey items. The standards are categorized into context, process, and content areas. The context standards include leadership and development of learning community standards. The process standards include design and strategies, collaboration skills, research based study, data driven approach, continuous evaluation to improve, and focus on the learning standards. The content standards include quality teaching, environment, and meaningful content standards (NSDC, 2001).

I have also used iNACOL standards for online learning created by NACOL in 2006 to inform survey development. There are four areas of iNACOL standards that determine the

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quality of an online program: institutional standards, evaluation standards, support standards, and teaching and learning standards. I have also used the teaching and learning standards for this study. Teaching and learning standards include the following concepts: technology skills, planning, design, interaction, collaboration, leadership, modeling, guiding, counseling, supporting, encouraging, understanding of special needs students, assessments, assignments, and use of data to improve. The other areas of standards (institutional, evaluation, and support) are less applicable to the focus of this study. The quality online teaching standards are rated based on a five point scale of zero to four where zero indicates the absence of a component and four indicates satisfactory performance. There is no category as “not applicable” on the standards.

I have designed the survey by cross referencing the NSDC and iNACOL standards. Survey questions were created by combining three categories: context, process, and content of NSDC standards for OPD, and twelve categories of iNACOL standards, as mentioned above, for online teaching.

The conceptual basis of survey items was created by cross referencing PD standards by NSDC and online teaching standards by iNACOL. The table 32 (Appendix E) describes the three main areas, context, process, and content standards of NSDC, with their total of nine categories, which were corresponded to the best possible iNACOL standards. This made the basis of the concepts for the survey items #9-18.

Survey items #9-18 are based on the concepts generated in the above manner (see Table 32). Table 32 (attached in the Appendix E) helped me keep the content and concepts well organized for developing the specific survey items. The survey is also attached in the Appendix G along with the introductory letter in Appendix F. The letter, with an embedded link to the survey was emailed to the course participants.

85 3.2.2.3 Structure and deployment of survey

The survey included 24 Likert type, multiple choice, yes/no, fill in the blank, and open-ended items. The SurveyMonkey link/URL was emailed to all of the 88 course participants. It was re- sent to potential participants who did not reply to the first request after two weeks. The online survey was based on the NSDC standards and the iNACOL standards prepared by NACOL as discussed earlier.