SWIFT
What does the Swift survey tool do?
Swift is a survey tool designed primarily for gathering student feedback. After a trial in Lent and
Easter 2008, it will replace the Ostrakon student feedback tool at Cambridge.
Swift is available for use by any senior member of the University, whether this is for carrying out
research surveys or specifically for gathering student feedback. Students may also use the tool
for University-related activities.
Swift is integrated with CamTools, making it easy to survey students who are already members of
a CamTools site.
However, you can survey groups of people other than the members of a CamTools site, simply by
entering their CRS IDs or email addresses.
You can also simply share the web address (URL) of the survey, and invite anyone to respond.
To get a Swift survey tool account
Please contact the CamTools Helpdesk ([email protected]) to arrange for a Swift
account to be set up.
If you are running student feedback surveys on behalf of the college, Department or Faculty,
please let us know, and we will set up a shared account and password for your institution. This is
so that you can safely share your account with your colleagues: if you create surveys using your
personal Raven account, colleagues will not be able to take over your questionnaires or view your
results if you go on holiday or leave the University. However, if your surveys are purely personal,
we can switch on the survey tool for your Raven account.
If you want to survey students who are already members of a CamTools site, you will also need
to add your Swift user name to that site as a 'Friend' and give them the 'maintain' or 'Course
Admin' role, using the 'Add Participants' option in the 'Site Info' page of the site. For full
instructions on how to add a Friend to a CamTools, please see the CamTools Administrators'
Guide.
Creating surveys in Swift – an overview
Creating a survey in Swift has three basic steps:
1. Put together the questions you want to ask. This is your questionnaire template.
Once you've created a questionnaire template, you can use it again and again. This
part of the process is covered in 'Working with Questionnaire Templates'.
2. Choose the start and end dates for your survey, and any other special
settings. This part of the process is covered in 'Running a Survey – steps 1 and 2'.
3. Choose the people you want to answer the questions. This may be a group of
students in an existing CamTools course site, it may be an ad-hoc group of people
whose emails you enter, or you may simply want to send round the web address
(URL) of your survey for anyone to fill in. This part of the process is covered in
'Running a Survey – steps 2 and 3'.
This guide will take you through these steps in detail.
Before you start
Logging in
1. Go to CamTools – http://camtools.cam.ac.uk
2. If you are using a shared account for your department or college student feedback, click
the 'Friends login' button. Enter your Swift user name and password.
3. If you are running a personal survey, click the 'Raven login' button and log in with Raven
as usual.
4. Choose the 'Personal Tools' option from the top right-hand menu.
5. If you are using a shared account, you will now see the Swift Survey Tool.
6. If you logged in with Raven, you will now see your CamTools Personal Tools. You will
need to switch on the Swift Survey Tool if you haven't already done so.

In your Personal Tools area, choose 'Customise' from the tools menu. You will see a list
of the sites you belong to.

Tick the box beside 'Personal Tools', and choose 'Edit' from the actions bar.

Now select 'Edit Tools' from the actions bar.

Tick the boxes beside the label 'Survey Tool' tools and click 'Continue'.

You will see the Survey Tool appear as an option at the bottom of the tool menu. Click
on 'Survey Tool'.
Navigating around Swift
Your survey dashboard
When you go to the survey tool in CamTools, you will see your survey dashboard. The survey
dashboard shows all the surveys you are currently running. Of course, if you aren’t yet running
any surveys, you won’t see anything listed here.
Navigating around
To navigate around the survey tool, click on the links in the grey actions bar (at the top of the
page). You will see that at some points, the tool also includes what’s called a "breadcrumb trail"
towards the top of the page which lets you click on a link to go back a step.
Working with Questionnaire Templates
The first step in putting together a Swift survey is to create a questionnaire template.
If you used to use the Ostrakon survey tool and contacted us to ask for your
questionnaires to be copied over to Swift, you'll find them waiting for you.
To see your Ostrakon questionnaire templates, click the 'Questionnaire Templates'
link in the action bar.
If your Ostrakon questionnaires have not been copied over, please email the
CamTools Helpdesk.
Creating a new questionnaire
To create a new questionnaire:
1. Click 'create new questionnaire' from either the 'survey dashboard' page or the
'questionnaire templates' page.
2. You will see the questionnaire title screen. Give your template a title. You can also add
any notes for yourself and your colleagues here - your survey respondents will not see
these notes. Click the 'next' button.
3. You will now see the 'Edit Questionnaire' screen. You don’t need to save your changes to
the questionnaire from this point on – any changes will save automatically.
Adding questions to your questionnaire
1. In the 'Edit Questionnaire' screen, you'll see “Add a question or heading” towards the top
of the page, together with a drop-down list.
2. Choose the type of question you want to add from the drop-down list and click the 'add'
button.
Adding a heading or instruction
1. Choose the 'heading/instruction' option from the drop-down list, and click the 'add' button.
2. Type your heading or instruction in the text box. You can use the formatting buttons to
adjust the appearance of the text, and to include images and web links.
3. Click the 'save' button to add your new heading to the questionnaire. You will be taken
back to the 'Edit Questionnaire' screen.
4. Click the 'preview' link at the top of the screen to preview your questionnaire.
Adding a rating scale question
1. To add a rating scale question (such as rating a handout from 'unsatisfactory' to
'excellent'), select the 'rating scale' option from the drop-down list, and click the 'add'
button.
2. Type your question in the 'question text' box.
3. Now select the rating scale from the choices in the 'scale' drop-down. Swift has a fixed
set of suggested rating scales. This is designed to make it easier for departments to
compare their results from year to year, and from course to course.
4. If you need a scale that is not given as standard in the drop-down list, please contact the
CamTools helpdesk ([email protected]). (Or, if you’re in a hurry, you can
always use a ‘multiple choice’ question rather than a ‘rating scale’ question)
5. Now choose how you would like your question to be displayed to the respondents. You
can choose between a number of display settings. These include the following:
Compact layout - this shows text only for the points at the end of the scale. This is similar
to the appearance of the rating scales in Ostrakon.
Compact layout + colours - as above, but with a coloured background indicating which is
the 'best' response.
Full width - this shows the text for every point on the scale, spread out across the full
width of the page.
Full width + colours - as above, but with a coloured background indicating which is the
'best' response.
Scaled - this shows the text for every point on the scale, but takes up more room
vertically than it does horizontally.
Scaled + colours - as above, but with a coloured background indicating which is the 'best'
response.
Vertical - this shows the text for every point on the scale, with one below the other
6. If you would like your respondents to have the option to tick a 'not applicable' box, tick the
'include a not applicable option'.
7. If you would like your respondents to have the option to add extra comments to their
rating, tick the ‘include comment box’ option.
8. Click the 'save' button to save your new question.
9. You will now be returned to the question editing screen, where you can see your new
question. Click the 'preview' link beside that question to see how it will look to your
respondents.
Adding a multiple-choice single-answer question
A multiple-choice single-answer question allows your respondents to choose only one answer
from a list (such as selecting which college they belong to).
1. Select the 'multiple choice' option from the drop-down list, and click the 'add' button.
2. Type your question in the 'question text' box.
3. Now enter your choices in the text boxes below. If you have more than 2 choices, click
the 'add option' button to add more options.
4. Now choose how you would like your question to be displayed to the respondents. You
can either have your options displayed in a vertical list or in a horizontal list across the full
width of the page.
5. If you would like your users to have the option to tick a 'not applicable' box, tick the
'include a not applicable option'.
6. If you would like your respondents to have the option to add extra comments to their
choice, tick the ‘include comment box’ option.
7. Click the 'save' button to save your new question.
8. You will now be returned to the question editing screen, where you can see your new
question. Click the 'preview' link beside that question to see how it will look to your
respondents.
Adding a multiple-choice multiple-answers question
Adding a multiple-choice multiple-answers question allows your respondents to choose several
answers from the list (such as selecting which libraries they use)
1. Select the 'multiple answer' option from the drop-down list, and click the 'add' button.
2. Type your question in the 'question text' box.
3. Now enter your choices in the text boxes below. If you have more than 2 choices, click
the 'add option' button to add more options.
4. Now choose how you would like your question to be displayed to the respondents. You
can either have your options displayed in a vertical list or in a horizontal list across the full
width of the page.
5. If you would like your users to have the option to tick a 'not applicable' box, tick the
'include a not applicable option'.
6. Click the 'save' button to save your new question.
7. You will now be returned to the question editing screen, where you can see your new
question. Click the 'preview' link beside that question to see how it will look to your
respondents.
Adding a free text question
Adding a free text question allows the respondents to type whatever they like, such as making a
comment about a course.
1. Select the 'free text' option from the drop-down list, and click the 'add' button.
2. Type your question in the 'question text' box.
3. Now choose how large a text box you would like to appear for this question. This does
not limit the amount of text that the respondent can actually write.
4. If you would like your users to have the option to tick a 'not applicable' box, tick the
'include a not applicable option'.
5. Click the 'save' button to save your new question.
6. You will now be returned to the question editing screen, where you can see your new
question. Click the 'preview' link beside that question to see how it will look to your
respondents.
To change a question, click the 'edit' link beside that question.
To delete a question, click the 'remove' link beside that question.
To reorder your questions, drag and drop them into the order you want, and then click the 'save
new order' button at the top of the page. You can also reorder questions by changing the number
from the drop-down list beside each question.
To preview the whole questionnaire, click the ‘preview’ link at the top of the page. You can also
get colleagues to check over your proposed questionnaire by emailing them the ‘web link’ for that
questionnaire. They won’t have to be logged in to see this view of the questionnaire, but they
won’t be able to change it.
Your questionnaire templates page
To see your existing questionnaire templates, click the 'Questionnaire Templates' link in the
action bar.
You will see a list of all your questionnaire templates, together with the name of the person that
created each one and the date it was last changed.
To preview a questionnaire, click the 'preview' link beside it.
You can also get colleagues to check over your proposed questionnaire by emailing them the
‘web link’ for that questionnaire (the web link shown beside the questionnaire's name). They won’t
have to be logged in to see this view of the questionnaire, but they won’t be able to change it.
You can only edit and delete questionnaire templates that are not currently in use by a survey
- this includes both surveys in progress, and surveys whose results are still available from the 'My
Surveys' page. If you want to delete a questionnaire that has been used in a survey in the past,
you will need to delete that survey that used that survey (in the 'My Surveys' page) before you
can delete the questionnaire.
To edit a questionnaire, click the ‘edit’ link.
To delete a questionnaire, click the ‘remove’ link.
To create a copy of an existing questionnaire template, go to the 'Questionnaire Template' page.
Click the 'copy' link beside the questionnaire you want to copy.
You will see a new questionnaire created beneath the first one, with the same name, but with
'(copy)' after it.
To edit and rename this copy, click the 'edit' link beside it.
One important thing to know about copying questionnaires is that if you edit the wording of any of
the questions in the questionnaire, it will also change the wording in the original questionnaire,
and vice versa. This only affects editing questions that were copied. You can add new questions
and delete questions without having any effect on the original questionnaire.
Running a survey
To start a new survey, you must first have created a questionnaire template. This
is the collection of questions and instructions that your respondents will reply to.
If you don't have a questionnaire template yet, follow the instructions above on
'creating a questionnaire'.
Setting up a new survey is a four step process.
Steps 1 and 2 – choosing the dates and settings for your survey
1. Click the 'start a new survey' link, at the top of the page in the Survey Dashboard, the ‘My
Surveys’ page, and the 'Edit Questionnaire' page.
2. Begin by giving your survey a title. You may also want to add in some instructions for the
respondents. These will be displayed at the top of the questionnaire.
3. Now choose the questionnaire template that you wish to use for this survey, and click
'next'.
4. You will now choose the settings for your survey
5. Begin by choosing the start date and the closing date for your survey. Your survey will be
available to your respondents from the start date onwards, until the closing date.
You will be able to view the results of the survey after your closing date. Note that you
can close a survey early, or re-open it once it has been closed.
6. If you would like your respondents to be able to leave questions blank, tick the 'allow
questions to be left unanswered' option. (Respondents can always leave free text
questions blank, even if you tick this option.)
7. If you would like your respondents to be able to return and change their answers before
survey closes, tick the 'respondents may change their answers' option.
8. Now choose whether you wish your respondents to log in with their Raven password (or
their Friends password for CamTools Friends), or whether they can respond
anonymously without logging in. Note that if you choose to allow people to respond
without logging in, the system will not be able to track who has completed the survey, and
so you will not be able to use the automatic reminder emails.
If you want people to have to log in to take the survey, they must already have a Raven
password or a CamTools Friends' password or they won't be able to log in (see below
for more details).
9. The “Lecturers opt-in settings” is not used at Cambridge, and should be ignored.
10. Respondents will receive an email from the website asking them to take a survey. To
read and change the text of this email, click the 'view and edit the notification email' link.
To change the email text, click the 'edit email template' button. The email text will appear
in an editable format. There are a number of template values that will be replaced by the
real values when the email goes out. These include the following
$URLtoTakeEval - the link respondents click to take the survey. You must include this
template value in your emails, or the respondents won't be able to take the survey!
$EvalTitle - the title of the survey
$EvalGroupTitle - the name of the CamTools course or project invited to the survey
$EvalStartDate - the starting date of the survey
$EvalDueDate - the closing date of the survey
Click the 'save' button to save your changes to the email.
11. If you would like to send out an automatic email reminder to people who have not yet
replied, select how often you would like reminders to be sent out from the drop-down box.
(You will need your respondents to log into CamTools using their Raven or CamTools
Friends passwords if you want to send out reminders.)
You can change the reminder email in the same way that you change the notification
email.
12. When you are happy with your settings, click 'Next' to move on to the next step of survey
creation: choosing who will take your survey.
Steps 3 and 4 – choosing who will take your survey
If you would like to survey all the ‘access’ or ‘student’ users in a CamTools site, this is very easy
to do in Swift. Many sites created since March 08 should automatically allow site administrators to
survey their site members. However, for other sites, the CamTools Helpdesk will need to change
some settings so you can survey your site members. If you want to survey students who are
already members of a CamTools site, you will then need to add your Swift user name to that site
as a 'Friend', using the 'Add Participants' option in the 'Site Info' page of the site. For full
instructions on how to add a Friend to a CamTools, please see the CamTools Administrators'
Guide.
If you want to survey students who are already members of a CamTools site, you will then need
to add your Swift user name to that site as a 'Friend' and give them the 'maintain' or 'Course
Admin' role, using the 'Add Participants' option in the 'Site Info' page of the site. For full
instructions on how to add a Friend to a CamTools, please see the CamTools Administrators'
Guide.
You can also simply share the web address (URL) of the survey, perhaps via a poster or a
departmental newsletter and invite anyone to respond.
1. If you have followed the instructions above, you should now be looking at a screen titled
“Step 3 of 4 - Assign survey to respondents”.
2. You can now choose either assign your survey to the students or ‘access’ members of a
CamTools site, survey an ad-hoc group who you have previously surveyed, or create a
new ad-hoc group to survey.
3. To survey the students in an existing CamTools site, click 'Assign to Survey Groups'.
You will see a list of the CamTools courses and projects whose members you can invite
to take your surveys.
Tick the appropriate group or groups. If you think that a group is missing from the list,
contact the CamTools Helpdesk.
You’ll note that you can invite more than one group to take a survey at once. So, for
example, if your Part I students should answer the same questionnaire as your Part II
students, you don’t have to create two surveys, but you can create one survey where you
invite two groups to answer the same questionnaire. (You can see the results from the
different groups either separately or together). If a student is in more than one group
invited to take the same survey, they would be asked to fill in one survey for each group
they belong to, and it would be clear which survey belonged to which group.
4. To create an adhoc group of people to survey via their email addresses, click ‘Assign to
an Adhoc Group now’.
Then click 'Create a new Adhoc Group now'. You will see the 'Create Adhoc Group' page.
Enter a name for your group.
Now enter the emails or CRS IDs of the people that you want to survey.
How you enter people's details depends on whether you have set the survey to be
accessed anonymously or whether people must log in to take it. If you have said that
people must log in to take the survey, they must have already have a Raven password or
a CamTools Friends password, so they can log in.
Because of this, it's really important you invite the people to take the survey in the right
way.
a) People who are members of the university and who have a Raven password need to
be added with their CRS ID's only (this is better known as the first part of their email
address, for example 'hmt24'). Please make sure you don't add them with their full email
address (so not [email protected] or [email protected]) because Swift sees
these email addresses as CamTools Friends users and the system will get totally
confused.
If you invite someone using their CRS ID, they will be able to take both anonymous
surveys and surveys where the respondents have to log in.
b) Of course, you can also add people who aren't University members, and don't have a
Raven password. There are two kinds of people who aren't Raven users. The first kind
are people who already have a CamTools Friends password. You can add these people
to fill in the survey by putting in their email address.
When you add these people to a Swift ad-hoc group, you'll see that their name is
displayed, rather than just their email address. This shows they have been recognised
by the system as a Friend user.
If you invite a CamTools Friend using their email address, they will be able to take both
anonymous surveys and surveys where the respondents have to log in.
c) There's also a third kind of people who can take surveys. These people aren't Raven
or Friends users, and they aren't recognized by CamTools or Swift. These are people
from outside the university, who aren't already using CamTools.
If you want them to take a survey anonymously, this is fine. They will still receive an
invitation to take the survey. However, these people can't log in to CamTools or Swift
because they're not CamTools or Raven users.
Make sure you've put the settings of the survey to 'Don't need to log in' because
otherwise these people won't be able to take it.
Click 'Create Adhoc Group' to create your group.
Click 'Back to Survey Group Assignments' to continue creating your survey.
Now click ‘Assign to an Adhoc Group now’ and tick the group that you just created.
5. If you want to share the web address of the survey with people yourself, you will still need
to put in at least one email address as a recipient. If you create an adhoc group
containing only your own email address, you will get an email inviting you to take the
survey, which you can then share with others.
6. Click 'next' to move on to the confirmation screen.
7. Check that the information shown there is correct, and then click 'Finished' to create your
survey.
Your survey results
You can only see the results of your survey after the survey closes.
To see your survey results
1. Go to the 'My Surveys' page by clicking on the link in the actions bar.
2. You will see a list of completed surveys.
3. Click on the 'view report' link by the appropriate survey.
4. If you asked more than one group of people to take the survey (e.g. Part I students and
Part II students), you will then see a list of these groups. Select the groups whose
responses you want to see.
5. You will now see a basic HTML preview of your results.
6. To see the Excel version of the results, click the 'export Excel' link at the top of the page.
This will allow you to look at the responses on an individual basis, although they will still
be anonymous. You can also use this to generate your own graphs and charts in Excel.
7. To see the CSV version of the results, click the 'CSV version' link at the top of the page.
8. To see the PDF report, click the 'export PDF' link at the top of the page. This gives an
automatically created PDF report of your results which can be printed out and circulated.
9. To see a list of the emails of the people who took your survey, click the 'Who took this
survey?' link. You can only use this feature if you asked people to log in to take the
survey.
Your surveys
To see a list of all the surveys you are running and have run, click the 'My Surveys' link in the
actions bar.
To change the settings for a survey currently in progress, click the 'edit' link beside it. You
can change the instructions, closing date and email reminder settings, but nothing else.
To close a survey early, so that no more responses will be received, and you can see the
results, click the 'close now' link beside it.
To re-open a closed survey, so that people can continue sending in their responses, click the
're-open' link beside it.
To delete a survey, click the 'remove' link beside it.
Deleting surveys cannot be undone.
Taking a survey
Respondents will receive an email from the website asking them to take a survey. You can
change the text of this email when you create the survey. The respondents will then click on a link
in the email to see the survey itself.
If you chose the 'log in with Raven' option, the respondents will then need to log in with either
Raven or their CamTools Friend password before they can take the survey.
It's important to know that the emails will be sent out to the email address set in the University's
central Lookup directory (www.lookup.cam.ac.uk). All students and new staff members should
have their email addresses automatically added to Lookup. However, University members have
the right to hide their email address in Lookup. In addition to this, some members of the
University didn't have their email entered into Lookup properly when they started work. (It's quite
obvious who this is, because when you look them up in the Lookup directory they don't have an
email listed!) To make absolutely sure that everyone can fill in the survey, it's a good idea to
publicise the link to your survey somewhere else as well. The survey links are quite short, so you
can put them on the bottom of a handout or type them in an email yourself.
Reminder emails
If you choose the 'log in with Raven' option when creating your survey, so that the survey tool can
keep track of who has replied to the survey, then you can also choose to send out reminder
emails to your respondents.
If you choose the 'don't have to login' option when creating your survey, the replies are
anonymous, and you can't send out reminder emails.