Student Learning

Principles of Learning and Teaching – Data Collection Tools

Teacher and student electronic survey

The Teacher and Student Electronic Survey download is provided to schools wishing to undertake PoLT in their school. The survey is web-based which means that teacher component mapping and student surveys can be completed online.

All surveys and configurations can be completed using a standard internet browser. Since the software runs from a central server at your school it does not need to be installed on each workstation.

The PoLT electronic survey download will:

  • allow export of data to Excel files
  • enable results to be saved as a PDF
  • allow teachers to view their own survey results
  • allow administrators to ‘enable’ or ‘disable’ surveys

Download: PoLT Electronic Teacher and Student Survey version 3 (ZIP - 4.1Mb) 

Requirements

The PoLT Electronic Survey is written in the scripting language ASP and therefore can only be installed on servers running a Microsoft Windows Server operating system. However, Apple Mac client workstations will still be able to complete surveys and view the data using a standard web-browser.

The PoLT Electronic Survey requires either Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or Microsoft SQL Server Express 2005 to store its results. The full version of SQL Server 2005 software is available through the Department of Education or the Express version is available as a free download from the Microsoft website.

Please make sure that your server meets the following system requirements:

  • Microsoft Windows Server Operating System (2003 or later)
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (available free from Microsoft website)
  • Your server should meet the system requirements of the Microsoft SQL server that you will install

Please make sure that your client workstations meet the following system requirements:

  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0+ or Mozilla Firefox (or any other compatible browser)
  • Adobe Flash Player 5.0 or above*
  • Javascript (Java) enabled on client browsers*
  • Minimum 1024 x 768 screen resolution
  • Adobe Flash Player and Java can be downloaded for free from www.adobe.com and www.java.com respectively.

The software only needs to be installed on a Windows Server capable of hosting websites. The setup program does not need to be run on client computers.

Further information on installing this application can be found by opening the Manual below.

You will need to follow these steps in the manual to complete the PoLT installation:

  1. PoLT Software Installation
  2. Installing the Microsoft SQL Server
  3. Attaching the PoLT Database to your SQL Server
  4. Configuring Internet Information Services (IIS)
  5. Connecting PoLT to the SQL Server

You must be logged in as an administrator on the server where you would like the PoLT Electronic Survey to reside.

You will need to have the following Windows components installed before continuing:

  • Internet Information Services (can be installed from your Windows Server Setup CD-ROM)
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Electronic survey trouble shooting

Installation

I can't install the PoLT electronic survey

You can only install the PoLT Electronic Survey on Windows 2000 Server or Windows 2003 Server. Before installing the software please make sure you have Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) installed. IIS can be installed from your Windows Server CD-ROM. Consult your computer technician if you require more information.

Accessing the surveys

When I try to access the PoLT surveys I get a HTTP 500 error
The Internet Information Server (IIS) on your Windows server will have ASP scripting disabled.

  1. Open IIS on the server by clicking on Start, Settings and Control Panel.
  2. Double-click on Administrative Tools and Internet Information Server (IIS) Manager.
  3. In the left pane of IIS click the Web Service Extensions folder and then in the right pane check that ‘ASP (Active Server Pages)’ is set to ‘Allowed’. If not, highlight the ‘Active Server Pages’ option, and click the Allow button.

Administration section

When I press the save button to save my settings I get an error (Error 70)
This usually occurs because the default Internet Information Server (IIS) anonymous user account does not have sufficient rights to save to the school or global configuration file.

  1. On the server, open My Computer and navigate to the location where you installed the PoLT Electronic Survey (normally this is: C:\Program Files\Department of Education\PoLT Electronic Survey).
  2. Open the bin and includes directories.
  3. Right-click the settings folder and select Properties.
  4. Click on the Security tab and make sure ‘IUSR_yourserver’ (i.e. IUSR_SERVER1) has ‘Modify’ rights. If the user is not in the security permissions list, add the user granting them Modify rights. Click OK to close the dialog box and try saving your class list again.

I cannot export to a PDF file
The PoLT Electronic Survey installs a third-party PDF Printer and PDF Converter Service on to the server.

Please note: if you installed the PoLT Electronic Survey on a Windows 2008 Server you will not be able to Export to PDF file. This is a known issue.

  1. Check that the “PDFcamp Printer” is installed in your ‘Printers and Faxes’ folder.
  2. Next click on Start, Run, and type in: services.msc then click OK.
  3. Scroll through the list of services to the “Very PDF DocConverter COM Service”.
  4. Right-click the service and select Properties.

Change the ‘Startup Type’ to Automatic and click the Start button to make sure that the service has been started. Click the OK button to close the dialog box and try again.

I cannot login to the administration area
Make sure that you have cookies enabled in the browser on the computer you are using.

If your address (URL) to the Administration Area includes an underscore _ character (for example:

http://my_server/polt/admin) you will not be able to login.

The underscore issue is a known problem with Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS). The only workaround is to use host header values on the website with a DNS alias that does not contain an underscore.

How to recover your school password

  1. On the server, open My Computer and navigate to the location where you installed the PoLT Electronic Survey (normally this is C:\Program Files\Department of Education\PoLT Electronic Survey).
  2. Open the “bin” directory, then the “includes” and “settings” directories.
  3. Open the global.inc.asp file in Notepad.

Find the line that starts with strSchoolList = “….”

The format of the line is: <school no>;<school name>;<password>,<school no>;<school name>;<pass….etc…

Note the semi-colon (;) between each value and the comma (,) between each school. The school

password can be changed by editing the respective <password> value. The entire line must be enclosed by talking marks “…”.

How to recover your cluster password 

  1. On the server, open My Computer and navigate to the location where you installed the PoLT Electronic Survey (normally this is C:\Program Files\Department of Education\PoLT Electronic Survey).
  2. Open the “bin” directory, then the “includes” and “settings” directories.
  3. Open the global.inc.asp file in Notepad.

Find the line that reads: strClusterPassword = “<password>”

Change the value in-between the talking marks to change your cluster administrator password.

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