You may have heard of Limesurvey in the context of the East Lothian-wide surveys of P6 and S2 student learning experiences, but not realised it was available for other purposes. It’s a powerful yet easy-to-use survey tool, and logins are available for East Lothian school staff and students on request.

As a result of last week’s changes:

1. Images can be easily uploaded and inserted in questions

• Images can be added to any part of a survey, such as in the welcome text, question group introductions or questions themselves.
• The process is much the same as adding an image to a blog, so is familiar to many staff.
• – Example question with (daft!) image https://www.edubuzz.org/screencasts/limesurvey-question-with-image.png
•  A quick “screencast” video of how it’s done: https://www.edubuzz.org/screencasts/adding-images-to-limesurvey.swf (less than 2 minutes, 2.6MB)

 2. Limesurvey can now perform quick analysis and charting of survey data

• This is done using the “Quick Statistics” tool (it uses a Pie Chart icon) while browsing survey data.
• This offers significant time savings compared to analysis in Excel, if only simple tables and graphs are required.
• The output from “Quick Statistics” can be viewed on screen as HTML, or used to create a pdf file.
• Output can also be sent to Excel, but charts aren’t included. This is still a good time-saver.

– The feature is documented here, with illustrations. http://www.docs.limesurvey.org/tiki-index.php?page=Statistics

 The availability of the simple analysis tools, and the time it saves, probably now makes it a viable tool for use by students wishing to perform their own surveys.