How do I ensure students can't submit .edu addresses in my survey?

One of the most popular questions that institutions ask their students is for a personal email address. The survey functionality on Producer allows you to limit the type of email address a student can respond with to make sure you're only getting personal email addresses and not addresses ending in '.edu' or '.ac.uk'.

Here's how to add this validation to your question:

1. On your survey, create a regular text question and label it something like 'Personal Email Address'. Then click on the 'Properties' button above the question.

2. A Properties tab will appear on the left-hand side of the window. You can expand the tab by clicking and dragging on the grey bar at the edge of the tab. Scroll down to the 'Validation' section.

3. Within the Validation section scroll down to 'Validators' and click the '+' button. In the dropdown menu click 'Expression'.

4. Some more fields will appear below. In the 'Text' field this is the text you want a student to see if what they have entered does not meet the correct criteria. 

Click on the text 'Expression is empty'. This will expand and allow you to set the expression

5. Here are what the following fields mean:

Build - This is where you define the rule for the field. Click on the name of the field you want the rule to apply to. Then select the parameter - in this case it is 'not contains'.

Value - The value is what you do not want your students to be able to enter. In this case, it is '.edu'.

The full expression means that the survey will check the Personal Email Address field to make sure it does not contain .edu 

Make sure to click 'Save Survey' at the top of the screen to save your changes.