Personalise and add data with "Participant variables"

You have the option of personalising your discussion topics by adding in Participant Variables.  The place-holder text can be added in your discussion topics to bring across and display participant and discussion board information. For example, you can add [name] to dynamically display the participant's name.

You can use these variables to address individuals in your topics or, as shown in the example below, add some participant information to a survey to identify the individual who completed each survey by clicking a link from the discussion board.

Survey link example:  

https://surveys.groupquality.com/survey/c/intercept/8ad8757b/?sid=[pid]-[bname]-[source]

When using the above method please use a "-" and not the "&" to separate the variables to be captured in the survey tool.

A survey tool should give you the option to append participant data on to the survey response. On the GroupQuality survey tool it looks like this: '?sid=' and other survey tools will have a comparable option to append data dynamically to the survey response.

In the above example, it will add both the participant's ID ( a unique identifier) and the discussion board name. You could also add '[pname]' to include the discussion topic. In the survey result, for each participant who completes the survey, it will add this discussion board information so that you can identify each participant.

The following checklist will help:

1. Both the survey and topic need to be active (live).
2. The topic "Participant Variables" checkbox needs to be checked and showing the variable examples as shown above (save this).
3. To test you will have to run a copy of the plan in a test (in-progress) board as it will not work while in draft or schedule mode. (you can use a test list or just run it without a list and add a participant manually in the participants' area).

below is a list of available participant variables.

Available participant variables:

You will need to use the variable name including the brackets when placing it in the topic.

For example, if you want to address everyone by their first name in your topic you would add:

HI [name]

This is todays topic and I would like you to....

The "[name]" participant variable would be replaced by the first name of the person viewing the topic.