The quiz and survey plugin WatuPRO is starting to get into data science. Here’s one of the most useful features you will not see in many others, if any, survey and quiz plugins: cross tabulation analysis.
If you would like to learn more, I recommend you to visit this page.
This feature is available from WatuPRO (with the Reporting Module installed) version 6.5.1.5. Go to “View results” page on any test and you will see “Cross Tabulation” link on top along the other links. Clicking on it will take you to a page where all single-answer and multiple-answer questions are available to cross-reference. Let’s see how this looks with our very simple 3 questions survey:
We have asked the respondents 3 questions: gender, location and what they are interested in. For the last question they could choose more than one answer.
Cross tabulation lets us intersect any two questions in the survey and can give us super useful insights. In the above simple example we can see how many users from each location are interesting in each of our offerings.
Note: the row total for Africa seems wrong? Nope, it’s correct. Our two respondents from Africa have selected both premium content and one on one coaching. So indeed there are only two respondents from this region.
You can see the same analysis by gender:
And again it may look like the row total for females in incorrect, but no, it isn’t. There are two female respondents but they have selected more than one answer.
The cross tabulation analysis can be turned any way, for example to have the offerings at left:
Its the same data but makes the table a bit more compact. This is entirely a matter of preference.
Every table that you generate can be published on the front-end using the shortcode shown under it:
You may want to exclude our CSS if it doesn’t look good on the front-end, and apply your own or just let it follow the standard table CSS defined by your theme.
Note that depending on the size of this data calculating cross table analysis could be resource intensive. While this won’t be a problem on the back-end where only you and maybe a handful of mates are looking, it could be a problem if you use the shortcode on a popular blog post. For this reason we recommend caching the pages that contain the cross-table shortcode.
And that’s just the beginning of turning WatuPRO into a super valuiable tool for surveys and data analysis. So stay tuned for what’s to come.
WatuPRO is a quiz plugin but it’s also perfect for running surveys. A survey is essentially a quiz that doesn’t give specific result / outcome to the user but presents the admin with the data of the user’s answers.
The most basic concepts are shown in the video and explained in more details in the post below.
Here is what you need to do to run a survey with WatuPRO:
Mark the questions as “survey” questions. This is done with a checkbox on the Add / Edit Question page saying “This is a survey question. This will ensure no green / red checkmark will be shown if you decide to show user’s answers on the “final screen”. You can also use the mass-edit functions in your Manage Questions page to turn multiple questions into survey questions at once.
Don’t create grades. Nothing stops you to create grades but typically surveys do not grade the user’s performance.
View the results. You can then view, export, etc all the answers of the respondents. More information here.
The above is enough to run functional survey. However there are several tools that can make surveys created with WatuPRO even better:
The Reporting Module
See a short demo survey that uses the Reporting Module.
If you include the Reporting module with your WatuPRO purchase you’ll be able to see a lot more structured data and run data analytics on the survey responses.
The cumulative stats per question will show you how many respondents have selected each option of each question. If the question is not labeled as a survey type and has correct & incorrect states, you’ll also see this information.
Cumulative stats per question
Follow the link to full details to get to the page that gives you detailed list of everyone’s answers, which can also be exported to CSV.
The stats per category and tag is very useful for quantitative questions because it will show cumulative points collected in each category, and again correct/incorrect percentages if the question has such characteristics:
Stats per category and tag
The super powerful cross tabulation analysis turns WatuPRO into a real scientific tool for running insightful data analysis on any survey:
The poll-like shortcodes enabled by the Reporting module let you also present structured %-based data for every question to the user. Example here. Obviously you can use them to also run simple one-question polls.
The Likert Scale Survey Maker
If you want to run a likert scale survey we have a free helper plugin that will make your work so much easier. It makes adding a lot of survey questions at least ten time faster than via the standard way and predefines the quiz settings to be most appropriate for a survey. Don’t worry, all the questions and settings are then editable just like in any quiz made with WatuPRO.
Updated in 2021: It’s surprising how many of the old plugins were no longer active. Things in the web change fast! I have updated this post with the most recent and updated alternatives.
No doubt Moodle is the standard open-source solution for building educational communities and portals. It’s been around for years, it has a huge community, regular updates and contributions. It’s really good.
But forget about it. Use WordPress.
I’m not writing this to bash Moodle. I appreciate the efforts that the community puts in it. Contributing to Moodle is in my plans as well. However, 90% of people who use it can achieve nearly the same functionality with WordPress and several plugins. Advantages?
WordPress is easier to install, update, and use
It has an even larger community and more contemporary interface
More free plugins
Easier to host (less demanding in resources)
A lot more premium plugins and themes
A lot more developers available for customization
Need I say anything else? Just look at the downloads – Moodle is more than 70MB zipped! Way too much code and stuff, maybe good, but you don’t need most. The latest WordPress installation file is just 15 MB at the moment.
The most important Moodle functions can be replaced with similar, sometimes better, free and premium WordPress plugins and/or themes. On top of that you can add some more of WordPress awesomeness – SEO plugins, caching plugins, tons of little widgets and so on. And, you can still host a regular blog along with the educational suite if you wish.
Here is how to replicate the most important Moodle functions in WordPress:
Courses
The core of Moodle is creating courses, assigning user groups to them, course reports, assignments. There are two great WordPress plugins that will handle this in one or another way:
TeachPress is properly maintained and up-to date plugin for creating courses with enrollments and publication management. It has only one version that’s entirely free. Scroll down their site to see a bunch of screenshots and get an idea what you can do with it.
On the other hand if you want to run education suite that’s more of a community thing, you may want to first install BuddyPress. This thing is huge: it turns your WordPress site into a social network and then you can go further and extend it with more plugins and themes. (Right, this means to extend a plugin with plugins). So once you extend WordPress with BuddyPress you can add educational capabilities with the great BuddyPress ScholarPress Courseware. It’s also fully open-source and free, well supported and frequently updated plugin. Allows managing courses, lectures, basic quizzes, assignments, and schedule calendars.
Now there is also the completely free Namaste! LMS which is also built by us. We have huge plans on it, so it’s worth taking a look!
Namaste! LMS
If you are interested in further researching the LMS space, check this list from 2021.
As these all-in-one plugins sometimes don’t have exactly what you need and may be clumsy in some areas, there are more niche-ones that can handle individual tasks better.
Exams and Tests
This is the area where Watu comes in place (and sometimes you will prefer its premium version). Watu lets you create exams with single-choice, multiple-choices, or open-end questions. Assign grades, points, display results instantly. In the premium version you can also keep stats of the taken exams, limit by user group and categories, email user results, set times, assign certificates and so on.
The Pro version has more question types, advanced grading system, and so on. Regardless the very powerful features, it’s pretty easy to get started with:
You may also want to check Quiz and Survey Master which is probably less easy to use but has some interesting features.
Our Chained quiz has unique chained logic features so it’s worth having a look for some specific learning sites!
Assignments
One great plugin for handling assignments is Cleverness To-Do List. Tasks can be assigned to different users along with deadlines, various permissions etc. Regular assignments for whole groups can be handled by adding a post to a selected group and connecting it with an exam.
Of course don’t forget that BuddyPress ScholarPress Courseware also has assignments module, and Namaste! LMS has assignments built in (and can be used as requirements to complete a lesson.
Chat
Chat plugins are abundant. You can use a simple self-hosted and free solution like 3CX Live Chat or get rid off the hosting hassles and subscribe for something like LiveChat or ChatRoll.
Polls are useful not just for educational sites but also in marketing and sales, or any other site that needs to get user feedback. But for educational suite perhaps the most useful will be WP-Polls (free).
Now if you want to relate poll answers to users and extract more detailed stats you may prefer to use a plugin for creating exams or surveys. Watu Quiz can also be used for polls.
Forums
There is no shortage of solutions here as well. While BBPress is the standard choice, you may wish to check ForumPress or wpForo Forum which is more up to date.
You may notice I sometimes favor paid versions. This is not just to encourage paying for quality stuff and helping WordPress developers to do their great job. If you are running a site that makes money, spending few bucks on a premium plugin may help you stay over the competition by having something they don’t have. Premium plugins usually come with high-class support too and are more user-friendly (well, not always, but most of them are).
Glossary
Glossary is another thing you would want to do even if your site is not educational portal. But speaking about education sites, GM Tooltip Glossary is one of the best choices. The core plugin is entirely free but has several premium add-ons that are very well worth the money. Custom taxonomies can be petty important for example for a more advanced education site.
The simpler Glossary by Codeat is also and excellent choice and probably simpler to use.
Resources
Moodle has a Resource module which can display different media types along with a lesson or course. WordPress itself can handle resource listings in many ways – the simplest is just to use the rich text editor in a post or page and link to various files or media. Because of this, there aren’t any notable plugins for handling on-page resources. If you plan to list external resources you may want to check some directory plugins. In most cases the WordPress itself is good enough to handle this functionality by its core.
Survey
Although close to exams and quizzes, surveys have slightly different purpose. So the best plugin for adding surveys is probably WP Survey And Quiz Tool. A simpler solution is again Watu Quiz (besides its primary purpose is exams) and especially WatuPRO which has very powerful reporting features (and more are coming!).
Wikis can be very useful in learning communities as your members can save you a tremendous amount of work. (I guess I’d need to create Wiki on this blog, so members can write about wikis. How meta!).
An excellent premium wiki plugin was available from WPMUdev but they have retired the plugins 🙂
A decent simple alternative is Yada Wiki from the official WordPress repository. The plugin is frequently updated and probably going to continue being active.
Encyclopedia / Glossary / Wiki is probably a good alternative if you also want to run a glossary and don’t like the other alternatives.
Workshop
There are plenty of ways to handle workshops and events. If you need a simple thing Simple Events Calendar might be your choice. However a lot more powerful alternative is The Events Calendar and the Registrations module by Roundup WP. These are super powerul plugins and no surprise they are the most popular ones in this area.
If your workshops involve webinars you may need to use some webinar software too. The only decent plugin I found is quite pricey so you may prefer to use some hosted webinars solution outside of WordPress.
Yes, Moodle fans, some of these features are more complicated and rich in Moodle. But most of us don’t need that. WordPress works in 90% or so of the cases and most webmasters are more comfortable with it.
Update in 2021: When I wrote this article first almost 9 years ago this was true. WordPress and its education related plugins have advanced so much (so proud that we have contributed as well!) that it’s questionable if Moodle is still more powerful. I am of course open to criticism here because I am not an active Moodle user.
As for Moodle, it’s a great stuff if you really need what it offers and have the patience to learn working with it.
