If you could ask your members any questions...

[Fred Paxton]

I run a closed community for around 400 teachers who are enrolled on my education organisation's programme. As part of their commitment they must log-in to the website, and as such it is a well-used and dynamic site.

Each year we ask these participants of ours a survey which they are obliged to complete, again as part of their commitment. Obviously this is a fantastic opportunity for me to find out about what they like about the site and what they don't.

If you had the chance to do this what would you ask (or indeed what have you asked, if you have done such a survey before)?

At the moment we have:

• How often they log on
• Which features they most use it for (blogs/forums/messaging)
• which features are most valuable to their progress on the programme
• What changes would make them use the site more
• Any other suggested changes

What do you guys think?

[Deb W.]

We asked them how interested they were in using each of the tools/features that we have on our Ning.  For response options, we included:

• interested and know how to use it
• Interested but don't know how to use it
• Not interested

That second option was the most illuminating - almost a third of our responses to that question were interested, but don't know how to use it.... it opened up a whole new area that we hadn't thought about, in terms of encouraging their active participation.

The other questions I might ask: what do you wish you could do with this network? What should we ask you about this network? What changes have you had in your teaching as a result of being a part of this network? What can you (or have you) contribute(d) to this network?

Hope that helps!

[Fred Paxton]

Hi Deb,

That's a great way of looking at it, thank you.

One of our key issues is ensuring everyone knows how to use the site, and therefore encouraging active participation. Although all our users are obliged to log on frequently, many do not have the skills to make full use it.

Thanks again.

F

[HELP SEEKER]

what would make them to pay for the use of the site

[Fred Paxton]

Hi,

We are a charitable organisation, so we don't seek profit from this site.

Thanks for your help anyway.

F

[kopper]

How do you collect and examine the data or responses from the survey? Do you use a third-party survey form/site of some kind? Or do you go through all the emails one by one? I have almost 7,500 members on my network, so I'd rather use some kind of survey tool/site to do this. But I agree it's a great idea!

[Lisa Eidson]

We did a survey one year after our closed network started and the most valuable question we asked was for respondents to rank goals for the site. This is how we learned that our members wanted the site to serve educational purposes rather than just for networking.

[Andrew Spiering]

Hey Lisa, just to clarify, did you list goals that your members then ranked or did you leave it open ended for your members to set the goals. If you listed the goals, then I would be curious to know what they were.

Thanks for the input!

[Paul Johnston]

Fred,

I just did a survey of my members and wish I had done more to ask them how they would like to contribute. I think you probably need to give them a list of options including some very easy things to do. My survey was anonymous so it is obviously not a great way of collecting specific offers for help (!), but if at least a few people tick the box "I would be prepared to do the newsletter from time to time", then if you ask: "who could do next week's newsletter?" then perhaps someone who ticked the box might then make the huge step to saying "yes"!