Hi all,
Caroline, if you're convinced of the need for branching (and I'm with Ben on the amount of work it will be), I think it may be worth at least speccing the datamodel for it now; if you don't, I'd guess it will be a significant amount of work to backport scoring from a branching system to a non-branching one.
Taking another spin on it, The simple survey module is up and running right now on ACS 4x, for instance, you can try it out at commongood.ybos.net. (In development, so be gentle..) I believe this is the same module that's downloadable at developer.ybos.net/modules. If you really just need a quick start, this might do the trick, and should integrate with dotlrn pretty easily.
So, I guess my question is: will the branching survey scores, (presumably used for testing?) need to integrate with the simple survey scores that you're rolling out in August? That might be a critical question. If the answer is no, I'd roll out simple survey quickly, and start working now on the branching system, paying extra attention to architectural decisions which will help you write a good admin interface; the admin interface for simple survey is, frankly, only okay. Adding branching support, expecting professors, et al. to use that interface would be pretty terrible.
Thoughts from others?
Don, incidentally, I don't know where your general ratings development is at, but we have a general ratings module, here http://developer.ybos.net/modules/stored_module-detail?module_id=2133, which you might want to use. It includes procs and graphics to make friendly ratings graphics. (like 3 stars out of 5).
