These are projects posted by the students of Dr. Gove Allen at Brigham Young University. These students have taken one semester-long course on VBA and generally have had no prior programming experience

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Allyson Woolsey: Qualtrics API Data Summary

Executive Summary

Over fifty students every semester are used as teaching assistants in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at BYU. Because TAs are so crucial to the “ecosystem of learning” in the mechanical engineering department, they have to be rated every semester by their students to make sure that they are performing well enough to be hired again. Students rate their TAs on a myriad of topics, including friendliness in and out of the classroom, their knowledge, the quality of their explanations on tough topics, and professionalism. Students can also give comments on why they answered the survey the way they did. Before another secretary and I came to the department office, these surveys were emailed out to over 1,300 students every semester by hand, through “copy and paste.” After the surveys were sent out, the results were collected and then processed by hand, and then the results of each survey were sent to each TA, as well as the TA supervisor. This would take weeks to accomplish. By automating the email process and the data collection and summarization process, this task is now done in a few minutes.  

The first program sends every student who had a TA in a Mechanical Engineering class during the semester an email with a link to rate their TA. The next program adds sheets based on the classes that are offered for the semester as a place to put the summarized survey results. The main program talks to Qualtrics through API REST requests. The request downloads raw data from the server and brings it back as a CSV file. The data is downloaded in a temporary file, the program alters and summarizes the data, and then brings the data over to the master spreadsheet. The next program makes the master spreadsheet bring all of the survey results on one page, and then another program emails the results out to each TA. After all 5 programs have been run, the task is complete.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Blog Archive