• Go to Course Tools in the navigation bar of your Brightspace course.
• Click on Course Admin.
• Select Surveys.

Here you can see the three existing standard surveys for educational evaluations within THUAS. These are set to 'hidden' by default for students in the Brightspace course:

Select the default survey to be edited and click on 'Edit' or on the name of the Survey.

1. At Properties you can check/adjust introduction texts.
2. At Restrictions you can, among other things, make the Survey visible and add a date on which the Survey becomes available for students to complete.
3. And at Reports Setup you can generate one or more reports. Click on this article for more information about this.

To safeguard student privacy and comply with the GDPR, the standard policy is that all digital course evaluations conducted via Brightspace are always anonymous. In the Properties, the survey is set to anonymous by default. This setting cannot be changed for course evaluations. This means the following:

• It is not visible to anyone who submitted which responses. Neither instructors, administrators, nor other stakeholders can trace this data back to individual students.
• All reports and summaries of evaluation results are provided exclusively at an aggregated (group) level. These do not contain any personal data or indirectly identifiable information.

The 'Properties' include standard texts for a welcome and thank you text. The introduction text appears at the top of the questionnaire when the student opens it. The submission text appears after the student has completed all questions and clicked on 'Submit'. Both texts are customizable.

The Restrictions are set to 'Hide from users' by default. Under 'Availability' you can enter a start and end date (= the period in which the student completes the survey):

To make the Survey visible to students, uncheck the box next to 'Hide from users'. Check the boxes for 'Has Start Date' and 'Has End Date' and enter an intended start and end date, for example:

In this example, this survey will now automatically be visible to students on the set start date, in the example above on October 1, 2025 at 9 a.m. On October 15, 2025 at 5 p.m., the survey will automatically 'close' and students will no longer be able to complete it.

The survey is now ready to be used. However, we strongly advise to directly follow up with step 2: setting up reports.

In the Reports Setup of the standard surveys, two standard reports are available:

1. Student Report (which allows students to view the results, without student data).

2. Teacher Report (which allows teachers to view the results, without student data).

You can see that in both reports the 'Release' is set to 'immediately'. This is the default setting and this means that a student / teacher can immediately view the report. The urgent advice is to adjust this and enter a date that is the same as the date on which the students can no longer complete the survey. This prevents students from accessing the survey results prematurely. 

We will demonstrate this below for the Student report. By clicking on Student report, you will enter the edit mode for this report:

Under 'Release' you will see that the box for 'immediately' has been checked. Adjust this by clicking the box for the date format and entering the correct date and time here, in line with the example above, which is October 15, 2025 at 5 p.m. (= the moment when the survey for students 'closes'):

Repeat the above for the Teachers report. Both reports are set up in such a way that only aggregated results are shown, so there is no link between a student and an individual answer to a particular question via the reports.

This step is optional.

If you want to add questions to the standard survey, please follow these instructions.

Under 'Properties', go to the 'Survey Questions' section. Here you can see the created standard questions:

Questions can be changed and/or added via 'Add/Edit Questions'. Each standard survey consists of 3 sections with questions:

Depending on the requirements, questions can be added to an existing section (e.g. adding 2 closed questions under the section 'Closed-ended questions course') or a new section can be created under which a number of questions can be added. The following points of attention are important:

• If desired, the order of the sections can be adjusted via the 'Move' option. Only do this if a new section has been added.
• Make sure that within a (new) section the added questions are set to 'Mandatory'. You can do this via the 'Edit values' option:

• Use the 'Preview' function to check how the customized questionnaire will look for the students

1. Go to Course Tools in the navigation bar of your Brightspace course.
2. Click on Course Admin.
3. Select Intelligent Agents.

Here you can see two Intelligent Agents focused on the standard surveys; these are set to 'disabled' by default:

By clicking on the name you enter the edit mode of the Intelligent Agent in question, where you have to check and/or adjust 4 things:

1. Enable (turn on the Intelligent Agent).

2. Scheduling (setting the date and/or frequency of the Intelligent Agent).

3. Criteria (the conditions under which the Intelligent Agent will deploy the action(s) at the time the above date is reached).

4. Actions (the action(s) taken by the Intelligent Agent at the time the criteria are met).

This is further elaborated below for the agent 'Invitation to evaluation':

1. Set the agent to 'Enabled' by selecting the checkbox in front of the text:

2. At 'Scheduling', set the 'Frequency' to 'One-Time Run' and enter the date and time you want the student to receive the invitation email, for example on 1 October 2025 at 9 am (= the moment the survey opens for students to complete):

3. At 'Criteria' check that the roles 'Student' and 'Student - SIS' are checked (this should already be correct, so please don't change anything else):

4. At 'Actions' you adjust the red texts:

You can insert the link to the survey via the 'Quicklink' icon in the menu of the text editor:

We recommend that you do not adjust the other settings.

For the Intelligent agent 'Reminder evaluation' this works basically the same, however:

At 'Scheduling', you adjust the date to a date (approximately) halfway between the start and end date of the survey, for example October 8, 2025 at 1 p.m.:

Surveys are mainly used for periodical evaluations. However, the tool can also be used for standalone surveys within a module. Possible topics for the survey can be feedback on a field trip, or to gain insights into what subjects students find difficult. You can opt for anonymous surveys, but you can also link the responses to the names of your students.

• Go to Course Tools in the navbar of your course.
• Select Surveys.
• Click on New Survey.

1. Give the survey a name.

2. Select, if needed, a category to which the survey belongs from the drop-down menu or click add category to create a new category (for example: Surveys Semester 1). Add a name and click Save.

3. Check the give instant feedback box to provide a student with instant feedback (that has been previously written) the moment they have filled in a question.

4. Check the make results anonymous box when students should fill in the survey anonymously. This option cannot be changed after the creation of the survey. Checking this box will also disable the ability to add release conditions to the survey. 

To safeguard student privacy and comply with the GDPR, the standard policy is that all digital course evaluations conducted via Brightspace are always anonymous.

5. Click Add/Edit Questions to add questions.

6. Add a description, if needed, that students will see before they fill in the survey or a submission message that students will see when they complete the survey. Click Expand description/submission Message and use the HTML editor to add the messages.

7. Add a footer if needed. This footer will be visible at the bottom of every page of the survey. Click Expand page footer and use the HTML editor to add the message.

8. Click Save and Close to return to the Survey homepage.

There are three ways to add questions to a survey:

1. Create new questions.
2. Upload existing questions.
3. Import existing questions from your Question Library.

• Go to Course Tools in the navbar of your course.
• Click Surveys.
• Click New Survey or Edit for an existing survey.
• Click Add/Edit Questions.
• Click Import to import existing questions:
  • Click Upload a file to import files from your computer. You can click Browse Files or use drag-and-drop. Note: you can only import .csv or .zip files!
  • Click Browse Question Library to import previously created or imported questions.

You can now use the Question Library to select and add questions. Use the search and filter options to find the questions you want.

• Use the search bar to find a question by filling in a (part) of the title.
• Use the drop-down menu next to Source to select from which source you want to add a question. You can search in the whole library but also in specific surveys or quizzes.
• Filter questions by type (e.g. multiple-choice, true/false or multi-select).
• Choose how you want to sort (by type, by title/text or by the total amount of achievable points).
• Select the questions you want to add.
• Click Add.

Questions that have been added from the question library can now be edited.

• Add the preferred question.
• Click Move to move questions in the question library from one section to another.
• Click Delete to remove questions from the survey (you will not remove them from the question library).
• Click Order to change the order of the questions.
• Click Edit Values to indicate whether a question is Mandatory or not.
  • Click Save to save your changes and return to the previous page.
• Click on the fold-out arrow next to a question and click Edit to edit the question.
• Click Done Editing Questions to return to the Edit Survey page.

On the Edit Survey page below Survey Questions you can:

1. Indicate next to Questions per Page how many questions are displayed per page. If you do not fill in a specific number (and confirm this by clicking Apply) the survey will be displayed on one page;
2. Check the Paging box if you want to allow students to view previous pages;
3. Use Shuffle questions at the quiz level to prevent all students from seeing all the questions in the same order (sections will be shuffled, not sub questions);
4. Create a path within your survey using Branching Wizard. Students will then answer questions in a set order and will only see one question per page. You will not be able to shuffle questions when you have selected this option (and will receive a notification if you have previously selected this option). Fill in the order of the questions by indicating which questions lead to what question after a certain answer or that the survey will end after a certain answer. Click Save to return to the Edit Survey page. Note: Branching only works with multiple choice and true/false questions.
5. Give students access to the survey with Invite Participants. Brightspace will send an email with a link to the survey to the participants. You will need to fill in a subject, a message and one or more email addresses when you click Invite Participants.

1. Add a title and a message. 
2. You can search for required students via the search bar.
3. Select the students you want to invite to this survey.
4. Click Submit to send the message.

For information about viewing results and creating report on Survey data, please read the following articles:

• How do I create a report of a survey?
• How do I view the results of a survey?