Question re online course evaluations

Submitted by slamar on Tue, 05/20/2008 - 11:50am.

I asked recently about experiences people have had with doing online
course evaluations, and didn't receive any answers.

Is anyone at all having students evaluate profs this way, or did my
question just get upstaged by the funny cat video?

We have a program that ought to replace the paper evaluations done during
the last class, but are wondering how to get students to sign on. We are
thinking the only practical way would be to hold their grades until they
evaluate the course. Any opinions even if you haven't actually tried
this?

Thanks,

Sandy Lamar
Computer Services Reference Librarian
New England School of Law
154 Stuart St.
Boston, MA 02116
slamar@nesl.edu
617-422-7331

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Question re online course evaluations
Submitted by wmiller on Wed, 05/21/2008 - 8:40am.

Hi,
 
I would say that evaluations are collected to capture the outliers - the very good and the very bad - and otherwise document in an institutional and bureaucratic sense that, yes, teaching is going on.
 
My own experience over many years is that you usually can tell what the results will be, but that students are quite capable of telling you something you don't want to acknowledge or even surprising you with insight. 10 minutes is a long time if you put your mind to it.
 
But this anecdote may also shed light on the problem John is poking at. We introduced online course evaluations back in 2003, using the same set of questions as the previous (then years-old) paper form. Response rates were not as good as in the paper era, so we considered requiring students to complete their evaluations. We were one step away from that, but a few strongly negative voices among the faculty caused a complete shift. A three-year 'experiment' of only-paper evaluations was approved. We had hoped to redo the form itself with a smaller, more rational and hopefully more productive set of questions, but that revision was always tabled as we dealt with the online-paper question. Now that paper seems to have won, the weight of inertia will probably end the revision of the form itself.
 
There's not a hint in the evaluation about anything having to do with technology, as if we were in a Paper Chase time warp.
 
Best,
 
Wayne
>>> On 5/20/2008 at 5:24 PM, "John Mayer" <jmayer@cali.org> wrote:
I have barely been paying attention to this thread, but now I am intrigued....What is it that you (that's the institutional "you") hope toaccomplish by getting 90-100% response rates on a 10 minute surveyfrom your students?   You really can't get too much substantiveinformation or any deep values information in 10 minutes (IMHO) andyou can probably predict within 10% the answer to any question on acourse evaluation form what students will say by asking any 3 randomstudents...1 will say they loved the teacher the course1 will say they hated his ties1 will say everything was "fine"Ok, that's pretty weak, but do you see what I am getting at?  Do you(again, the institution) want student feedback to confirm that yourfaculty are teaching?  ... that faculty are "good" teachers?   thatstudents are happy?  ... that there is something that you could bedoing to make them happier?  I am honestly curious.John

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