TWO CASE STUDIES FOR COLLECTING WEB-BASED USER FEEDBACK: MULTIPLE-CHOICE SURVEYS AND MOUSE-BASED MOTOR RESPONSE

The web provides a widely available interface not only for disseminating information, but also for collecting feedback from users. In this report we describe two web-based systems for collecting and summarizing user data. The first is a web-based tool for online surveys based on Perl and the Common Gateway Interface (CGI), which we developed to allow students to evaluate a new instructional technology. The second is a web-based tool for collecting data on human motor response based on timing between mouse clicks, based on the Java programming language. We describe both systems and initial data collected. The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a standard set of guidelines for interfacing external applications with information servers, such as HTTP or Web servers. HTTP documents are static, meaning they do not change, while on the other hand, a CGI program is executed in real-time, so that it can output dynamic information. Using CGI, a web server can call a program while passing in user specific data entered into an online form. The program then processes the data and passes the response back to the web server, as illustrated in Figur