Using Moodle as On-line Survey Instrument in Medical Education

Abstract

One of the principal issues in any university community is the lack of communication between community categories – leadership, administration, teaching staff and students. Sometimes is important to know in a short time the opinion of one particular group, without investing a lot of resources and without being extremely formal. The aim of this study was to test if an open-source platform – Moodle – can be used for quick surveys inside the Faculty of Medicine, UMF “Iuliu Hatieganu” Cluj-Napoca community. For this, on existing Moodle platform was installed one specific survey instrument – a questionnaire module and a survey containing a real life issue to the students of Faculty of Medicine was launched. The researchers have focused on how the specific problems of a survey - preparing of the survey, the survey process and the analysis of the results can be handle in Moodle.  The pilot survey was a success; the conclusion of the study was that Moodle can be used as on-line survey instrument for that community.