In this article we cover:
- How to create a self-paced activity
- Creating multiple self-paced activities
- Shuffle the question order
- Setting start and end times
Self-paced activities are a restricted feature for Vevox Free Accounts. See this article for more details.
How to create a self-paced activity:
Creating a self-paced activity works much the same way as creating polls.
Create a session. (Start your session if you have not already done so).
Select 'Self-paced' from the navigation menu.
Press the '+ Add activity' button.
Select whether you would like to create a self-paced survey or a self-paced quiz. Remember, surveys are for when you are wanting to gather opinion based feedback, quizzes are for when you want to test knowledge with correct answers.
The next step is to add some questions. Adding questions works the same way as creating live polls. Press the '+ Add Question' button.
Select the type of question you would like to create. You can choose between multichoice, text, ranking, matching, rating, & numeric (word cloud, XY plot and demographic polls are not available in surveys.)
Once you have added your question you can repeat the process for all the different questions you want to add. Press 'Done' to save your question. Repeat this process to add multiple questions to your survey.
You can also add questions from the question library including questions from:
- My previous questions
- Vevox sample content
- Account collections or
- AI generated questions or
- Import questions
Advanced settings: Depending on whether you are creating a survey or a quiz there are some advanced settings you can adjust for the self-paced activity.
- Survey settings
- Adjust the description of the survey that will appear for participants when they enter the survey on their devices.
- Shuffle question order - Show the questions in a random order for each participant
- Schedule - Set times for when you want the survey to be available for people to complete, so you don't have to manually start and stop it.
- Quiz settings - In addition to the settings above for surveys a quiz has a few more extra settings
- Time limit - Set a timer for how long participants have to complete the quiz from the moment they begin.
- Quiz summary screen - Configure what a participant will see when they complete the quiz. You can configure various combinations of setting to allow participants to see nothing, their total score, what the correct answer were and explanations and a leaderboard of people who have complete the quiz so far.
Creating multiple surveys
Pro plans and higher can run multiple surveys or self-paced quizzes simultaneously.
When you want to create additional activities , follow the same steps outlined above. Each new activity will be listed separately and will appear below any previously created ones. All activities within the same session share the same 9-digit Session ID.
Self-paced activities will appear in the participant app in the same order as they are listed in the dashboard. Participants cannot be required to complete one activity before starting another.
In this example, the “ANTH 101 Student Survey” and “Lecturer Survey” have been opened, but the “Freshman” and “Student Council” surveys have not yet been made visible.
The self-paced menu in the participant app shows which activities have been completed (submitted) and which are still outstanding. Activities that have not been opened by the host in the dashboard will not appear in the participant app.
In the example above, the participant can see two available surveys opened by the host/lecturer — “ANTH 101 Student Survey” and “Lecturer Survey.” The participant has already completed and submitted the first survey (indicated by the “Submitted” label next to the name) but has not yet responded to the “Lecturer Feedback” survey.
Shuffle the question order
When turning on the shuffle question order, the system will automatically randomize the order of the questions for each participant, preventing any bias created by the order and limiting assessment cheating.
To turn the shuffle question order on, select the tick box in the 'Advanced Settings'.
Set a start and end time for your survey
This feature is available to all Pro plans and above.
You can schedule when your survey becomes available by setting a start and/or end time. Once the start time arrives, the survey will automatically open for participants and remain available until the end time (if set).
If you leave the end time blank, the survey will stay open indefinitely until you close it manually.
If no schedule is set, you can open and close the survey manually using the ‘Open Survey / Close Survey’ buttons.
The survey will open automatically appearing in the participant app and then close again by itself.
Things to note when you schedule your survey
-
For a survey to appear and be available in the participant app, two things must happen:
- The Vevox session must be started.
- The survey must be opened — either manually or automatically (if a schedule has been set).
- If only a start time is scheduled, the survey stays open indefinitely or until you close it manually.
- The schedule feature automates opening/closing but does not remind participants to complete the survey.
- If you manually open/close your survey in the dashboard, it will always override the scheduled times.
- Vevox auto-saves progress if a participant leaves mid-survey. They’ll find their previous answers when they return but must still press ‘Submit’ to send responses.
- The time zone used for your scheduled surveys will use the same time zone as the one set under the 'Session setup' area of your session settings (see image below). This time zone is taken from the time zone of your computer when you create your session. Keep this in mind if you’re running surveys across different time zones.
You can confirm your local time zone under Settings. The session set up will only show the scheduled start time of the survey. The end time is confirmed in the Survey Advanced settings.